WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHAT DRIVES YOU?
My life's purpose is to encourage more empathy for one another by revealing the universal nature of suffering. I consider the work I do to be social practice, whether it’s a documentary project, lecture series, or installation. I want people to feel less alone. Why? I grew up rather isolated and absorbed a lot of suffering. I feel a responsibility to make work about complex topics because relating to another person's experience is enough to save you from the pain.
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU DO FOR SANITY MAINTENANCE?
Let my phone die and not turn it back on for a few days. I took the SIM card out of my iphone and made the permanent switch over to the Light Phone. My favorite time of the day is the evening and I like to stare out the window and listen to the jazz station on my radio.
WHAT IS THE SCRAPPIEST THING YOU’VE DONE TO MAKE OR SAVE $$?
Always looking for suggestions… I’ll do whatever I need to do so I can keep doing what I need to do.
YOUR TASK IS TO PRESCRIBE ONE BOOK OR FILM TO THE COLLECTIVE FOR MANDATORY CONSUMPTION. WHAT IS IT?
BOOK: Right now I would prescribe Boris Groys' PHILOSOPHY OF CARE. In PHILOSOPHY OF CARE, Groys explains that social, economic, and political systems depend on individuals to practice self-care, and medical care functions as a way to repair our bodies so we can continue to maintain a functioning society. Another discussion in the book that I find useful is the etymology of Truth. In Plato’s POLITEIA (THE REPUBLIC), he explains that we can achieve what one considers “truth” but only under external guidance and control because our soul is imprisoned inside our body and our body is weighed down by desires and obligations. Truth will only show once we are able to free ourselves from these desires to make room for contemplation of the soul and preparation for death.
current obsession?
Whistleblowers.
I just rewatched Laura Poitras’ 9/11 TRILOGY, which is RISK, CITIZENFOUR and MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY. In RISK and CITIZENFOUR, Poitras has unmatched access to both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Poitras was with Assange when he was in Ecuador on asylum. She was also in the hotel room with Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald when he published the reports in The Guardian. The CIA was following her around trying to confiscate her hard drives. Snowden says the media tends to focus on personalities to distract us. WikiLeaks didn’t become a household name until Assange's sexual assault scandal. I find that really telling of the media and their priorities.
MOST USEFUL FAILURE?
Not becoming a career photographer. I've been a documentary photographer for over a decade now and my dream was to work for the magazines, but I’m very stubborn and unable to compromise my outdated vision that is heavily influenced by the 1960’s magazine work of Diane Arbus.
In 2021, I thought my career was finally going to launch when The Guardian asked to publish a project I worked on in 2017 about an acquaintance of mine who decided to de-transition after struggling with housing instability. The story was pulled last minute because the culture editor was worried about TERF backlash in the comment section. Initially I was very upset because of the false pretenses. My intention for publishing the work was for other people who had made the difficult decision to de-transition see the story and feel less alone.
In the documentary photography world there is an external pressure to publish stories in order to get more exposure which will lead to more work. This, to me, equates to being a content creator and overlooks both the permanence and disposability of information on the internet. I didn’t understand this fully until experiencing a loss of control of my images once they were put online. After that experience, I decided to stop pursuing mainstream media as an outlet for my work. I don’t want my photographs to become clickbait or end up in the wrong hands. I am so thankful I did this now because image-making in the media has become increasingly more exploitative. There’s a very fine line, and I’m cautious now when I produce another person’s image as a means to tell their story. I’ve lost a lot of faith in photography as a document or a truth and I’m way more invested in writing and listening to people talk because their voices give them more agency.
SELECTED Q FROM THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE: What is your current state of mind?
Gandhi’s Principles of Non-Violence.
Himsa (violence) degrades and corrupts humans to meet force with force and hatred with hatred, and it only increases our progressive degeneration. Non-violence heals and restores our nature. It is not a policy to obtain power, it is a way of transforming our relationships to bring about peace.
When we started Uncensored New York, there was a desire to disrupt the order and restore peace amongst one another. Disruption is easy because we all have so much anger and want to let it out, but the challenge is finding peace within yourself, especially when the majority of information we consume is negative. Corruption is the backbone of society which has become more apparent year after year. Reacting and blaming one another is just going to push us further apart. There is no justification for continuous hate, harassment, and harm among us, and I mean that at an interpersonal level in local artist communities. We are all so privileged to be able to express ourselves through art. A solution-based mindset can be hard because it requires openness and empathy, which is scarce in a traumatized society, but I’m starting to see a collective consciousness developing around the ideas of care. Julian Assange says in WHEN GOOGLE MET WIKILEAKS that "we can be truthed into peace."
Uncensored NY is pivoting away from the focus on issues of the internet by developing programming that will emphasize meditation and healing. We are continuing to work on two artist projects that were part of the Death of the Subject exhibition at Public Works Administration. One is Profane_realm, a USB exchange across the Americas. We will be using this alternative form of distribution to archive our lectures and seminar class discussions. Another is Joslyn Crocco’s "Teatime," an audiovisual gathering that subverts the noise of media and consumerism to invoke presence and consciousness. Crocco’s work investigates how we can embrace technology in healthier ways while allowing space for harmony in this modern world.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
I’ve been putting all of my time into the Uncensored New York Education Program which is a culmination of collective research on ways to navigate and respond to the distressing nature of our current political climate. My goal is to open a residency focusing on art and social practice somewhere in the rural U.S. where artists can live and work in exchange for teaching the locals. I really value collaborative, affordable, and forward-thinking environments and I want to be able to pay people to learn.
The first course, Fear or Death, will be a year-long curatorial project inspired by a conversation I had with a cab driver who was practicing Hinduism. He told me that we worship fear, fear which to some is God, and without that fear we have nothing. I developed the course using the texts of Paul Virilio’s ADMINISTRATION OF FEAR, David Wojnarowicz’ CLOSE TO THE KNIVES and Tiziana Terranova’s AFTER THE INTERNET. The first installment of the course started last week and we had a round table discussion on Jackie Wang’s "Against Innocence," an essay that highlights the racism and classism of the politics of safety. Wang states, "Another troublesome manifestation of the politics of safety is an emphasis on personal comfort that supports police behavior in consensus-based groups or spaces." There were people in the room from all different backgrounds and beliefs and we were able to have a conversation that would have easily escalated if it were to have happened between strangers on the internet.
DISCIPLINE OR ANARCHY?
Anarchy. I grew up in a very small town. I had to wear a uniform and go to church once a week for the first half of my life so I don’t like when people tell me what I should or should not do. I try to break every rule that I can, but in a very orderly fashion, so maybe that makes me more of an anti-authoritarian. I would never call myself an Anarchist because anarchy is defined by what it excludes and my life's work is motivated by bringing people together to heal. Maybe that sentiment is an idealization that will only occur after death but I don’t respect the modernized version of Anarchy...It seems like just a bunch of people complaining and weaponizing their identity on the internet.
