1000 Coordinates of Violence

Wall installation (half of 1000) at Southeby’s Institute of Art, “Imagine” exhibition, 2019.

Printed Matter, solo exhibition. Installed in window (about 1/3 of the 1000) with remaining portion in a grid on back wall. 2016

Installation in storefront (37th Street & 8th Avenue, Manhattan). 2013

Installed at KunstBunker in Nurnberg in 2001

1000 Coordinates of Violence

1000 paper card/sheets, each pierced by a 22 caliber bullet,bear the longitude and latitute of a site of “state-sanctioned” violence somewhere on the planet between the years 1 and 1999 C.E.  Without more specific place or event information, we can’t engage in our usual defense mechanisms against confronting unremitting human violence: “It was so long ago…”  “It was so far away…”  or worse, “7000 dead is not so many, what about…”  

Hopefully, the minimal, even calm aesthetics of this work lets us pause before running to hide behind our defenses, letting us contemplate this history with a different, more open, mind.

This installation was originally exhibited in a German bunker in Nurnberg that was converted into an art space, “KunstBunker” in 2000 (Images 7-8). Around 2010, it was installed in a storefront in Manhattan through Chashama Space to Present program (Images 5-6).  In 2016, it was a major part of my solo exhibition at Printed Matter, “Perhaps they were Periods of Peace” (Images 2-4) and most recently it was included in “Imagine” a group exhibition examining warfare at Southeby’s Institute of Art in 2019 (Image 1).

Every installation is diffferent, responding to the space and taking advantage of the flexibility of the so many small components.