WHO ARE YOU?

AT THE NEW MUSEUM

August 31, 2017
(Because of everything in the past weeks - my own health issues and switching to a new doctor and clinic, tracking wild fires, floods and earthquakes affecting far flung friends, I've not published several prepared posts. I will be doing that beginning with this one.)

(From the Outside looking In)

After gathering in the lobby we began on the fifth floor

“Half-Truths”

Paul Ramírez Jonas employs the mechanisms of bureaucracies and law as a starting point from which to consider truth. He explores the contours of social contracts, without which institutions meant to uphold collective governance become arbitrary, yet remain powerfully consequential in people’s lives. The poetics of these works speak to a political climate in which authoritarian tactics seek to delegitimize the participatory checks and balances of democratic truth, through pronouncements of “dishonest media” and the falsehoods of public servants being declared “alternative facts.” Relative meaning, the plurality of truth, shared authorship, and the equal right to free speech were once more commonly employed to assert marginalized voices. But with such sentiments of alternativeness being co-opted by oppressive forces, “Half-Truths” asks: is it possible to collectively create and agree upon truth?

Alternative Facts

Turns lies and fantasies into ostensibly truthful public documents. The first untruth designates the facilitator, often the artist himself, as a notary.

Each subsequent certification process yields two documents, one for the viewer to keep and another to be collected in the installation. The cost of this legal transformation requires payment of a gold coin, which the facilitator will assist in creating by chemically altering visitors’ spare change. I gave a penny. It was turned into gold while I wrote out my personal false truth:

"I have Won the Lotto"

(My fantasy was that I would purchase available land in Iceland and build a well appointed, self sustaining, ecologically sound settlement where peaceful coexistence would be made possible for a community of like minded others. The false truth was hung on a huge back wall containing many others)

Fake ID

invites visitors to empty their pockets of materials containing information that determines currency, credit, access, membership, and citizenship status. Through a process of exchange and inquiry with each participant, the facilitator deconstructs photocopies of their documents—school IDs, transportation passes, credit cards, and licenses—to create a new identification card. Through human exchange, Ramirez Jonas aims to enunciate the possibilities of self-determined constructions of identity within the limits of 'datafication' imposed by state, corporate, and social systems. No personal data is kept and none is recognizable on the final document.We each end up with a constructed ID that will also allow us to return to the museum for the duration of the show which runs through September 17th.

We each end up with a constructed ID that will also allow us to return to the museum for the duration of the show which runs through September 17th.
LINK

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/paul-ramirezjonas-half-truths