Talking Heads catalog

TALKING HEADS A THESIS SHOW BY EMILY GREENBERG TALKING HEADS A THESIS SHOW BY EMILY GREENBERG TALKING HEADS A THESIS SHOW BY EMILY GREENBERG TALKING HEADS A THESIS SHOW BY EMILY GREENBERG

Artist statement It is precisely facts which do not exist, only interpretations. – Nietzsche1

Often relying on appropriated materials, my work is an un-making, an intervention into a world characterized by misinformation, “truthiness,” and seemingly authoritative modes of representation no longer valid in an age of rapid information exchange. Like chapters in an ongoing social experiment, my artworks ask subjects to respond to narrative environments that are incomplete or out of order, where parameters are defined but full content is inaccessible. Much of my work focuses on the politics of memory, the dissemination of information, and the portrayal of current events by major media outlets or prominent commentators, ie “talking heads.” Although these portrayals are also incomplete, they do not allow for a personal narrative to fill in the gaps. My work attempts to create an environment conducive to personal narrative by reorganizing information normally taken for granted as part of the cultural landscape through cutting, juxtaposition, appropriation, and playful satire. In doing so, the work allows for a personal and subjective narrative within the highly controlled and partisan framework of political discourse. Aesthetics of redaction and restraint are deployed against themselves. The resulting narrative is not cohesive but is an index of calculated responses made both by my initial prompt and the actions of others. Spanning printed ephemera, video, sound, net art, and interactive installation, my work resists classification as a commercial art object. My role as artist is primarily that of facilitator and collaborator: I physically remove myself from the work to avoid becoming a “talking head” myself.

These statements are subject to change without notice.

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Project statements Through fake news articles, documents, and interviews as well as a net intervention, The Fake Guardian offers a dystopian post-script to the Edward Snowden story. A satiric take on the UK newspaper that first reported the NSA leaks, the work operates somewhere between parody and conspiracy theory, between satiric alternative news outlet (The Onion, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report) and tactical media project (Zack Exley/RTMark’s GWbush.com, the Yes Men).

Media theorist Boris Groys has called WikiLeaks “the first truly postmodern conspiracy” because its ideology of transparency is based on the most secretive of operations. Similarly, Edward Snowden’s own claims of democracy and transparency are undermined by actions that are highly secetive and entirely undemocratic (although pragmatically, even ethically necessary). A single person is controlling what information we are getting, which media outlets deliver it to us and when, and which parts are redacted. A single person is imposing a topdown narrative without room for dialogue. Hero or traitor, why do we believe him in the first place? With this body of work, I want viewers to question topdown narratives cloaked in ideologies of transparency. At the same time, I hope to create a space where new dialogues about these events can take place without the mediation of talking heads.

The video interview is based on footage from Glenn Greenwald’s interview with Edward Snowden, but I have heavily edited and spliced this footage (using techniques influenced by Omer Fast’s video work, most notably The Casting) to craft a new narrative. As in Fast’s work, I undermine the notion of documentary by turning television editing techniques against themselves. Here, I used video montage with sound overlay to hide my extensive edits, creating the illusion of seamless audio and revealing the ease of journalistic manipulation. By inserting myself as anonymous artist-interviewer, I subvert the authority of the talking head.

In addition to the work in the gallery, fake articles and documents from the website will be “leaked” via my social media accounts each day of this exhibition.

Metadata Hotline reclaims the telephone as a site of communication rather than as a site of surveillance. As political theorist Jodie Dean has argued, organizations with ideologies of transparency often generate so much media spectacle that they distract from they very issues they claim to highlight; the celebrity of figures like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden distracts from the information they disseminate. Metadata Hotline therefore seeks to deliver the information gleaned from the NSA leaks more directly, more personally, and with less spectacle. Although the NSA claims to access only the metadata of phone

communications, this information often reveals much more than the content itself, and narratives are easily constructed to fill in the gaps. Metadata Hotline informs listeners about what kind of information the government can access and what can be inferred from it. While the NSA operates secretly, the speaker here is very direct, even smug, in relaying information about surveillance. In using a vintage land line phone, the work references a time before cell phones and GPS tracking, when the metadata from a phone call might reveal only where a person lives but nothing more. Unlike cordless land phones, however, this phone’s design alludes to the shape of the body; the talking head is reminded of the body it has left behind.

This project is in dialogue with other tactical media projects that reveal previously hidden information used for corporate profit, often with no regard for personal privacy or environmental concerns: Michael Mandiberg’s Real Costs and Oil Standard projects, Firefox plug-ins that insert carbon emissions data and oil prices into e-commerce and travel websites; the Bureau of Inverse Technology’s bit cab, a hijacking of taxi display units which typically use geospecific data to create targeted advertisements; and Preemptive Media’s SWIPE, a traveling bar with accompanying website where users are informed of what information can be seen from a credit card swipe.

Appropriating found footage from both legal dramas and Hillary Clinton’s Senate testimony on Benghazi, The Trial explores truth telling and performance within the highly gendered and racialized politico-legal framework of the cinematic courtoom. Taking stylistic cues from the videos of Christian Marclay, I use the mash-up to challenge notions of singular, stable truths that the court room purports to find; in my video, it is the fractured, contradictory narrative that is the most honest, the incomplete narrative that is most true.

In the courtroom, versions of competing subjective truths are performed. And yet, these simple and subjective “truths” have very objective, real conseequences: The court can really sentence someone to death. It is a place of binaries - defendents are guilty or innocent, questions have yes or no answers, and statements are true or false. However, real world events do not fit neatly within such a literal or simplistic (and ultimately patriarchal) framework, and Benghazi is a case in point. The narrative surrounding the Benghazi attacks changed as more information became available. As Hillary Clinton testifies, the government did not purposefully mislead the public but was instead trying in real time to get to the best information, some of which was later proven incorrect.

Unsurprisingly, it was two women, one of color - Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice - who took the fall for Benghazi and had to answer to mostly white male reporters and senators. That the lawyers in my video are all white men was not so much a decision on my part as a reflection on the racial and gendered

makeup of the cinematic courtroom, where women and minorities are more frequently depicted as witnesses or defendants (as are foreigners and those who are mentally handicapped). Of the many legal dramas I researched for this piece, only Philadelphia (1993) and Legally Blonde (2001) portrayed non-white or female lead attorneys (and the latter in a problematic way). However, women and racial minorities are frequently depicted as witnesses who perjure themselves or change their stories - not necessarily because what they are saying is untrue but simply because it does not conform to the narrow true/false binary of the white male-dominated courtroom.

In this work, I focussed on witnesses who fracture this binary and put different stories - both real and fictional - in dialogue with one another. When a the prosecuting attorney tries to invalidate her as an expert witness in My Cousin Vinny, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) calls him out for asking a trick question. “Why do you not let me speak the truth?” Irene Hoffman ( Judy Garland) counters in Judgment at Nuremberg when her innocent relationship with an older family friend is construed as sexual. In Howl, one witness argues that he can’t answer a question just yes or no; another points out that the book itself defies a literal, legalistic translation. And then there is Hillary Clinton’s fiery Benghazi testimony. Try as the senators do to restrict the Benghazi story to two narratives, one true and one false - a planned act of terror or a spontaneous attack by armed militants - Clinton shows that the narrative is much more complicated and much less stable.

Works in the show The Fake Guardian, 2013

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The Fake Guardian – Monday, December 16, 2013 ink on newsprint, edition of 75 11” x 17”

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The Fake News Ticker single channel projection, loop dimensions variable

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The Fake Interview with Edward Snowden video with sound, 2:43 dimensions variable

www.thefakeguardian.com website

Metadata Hotline, 2013 telephone, speakers, micro-controller, LED, sound 12 clips ranging from 0:34 to 0:56 7” x 5” x 9” voice actor: Andrew Kagen collaborators: Samantha Bobra & Diego Olvera (software support), Qichao Shao (hardware support) The Trial, 2013 single channel projection with sound, 3:36 dimensions variable

floor one

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1a floor two

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Acknowledgments Thanks to my family for trekking out to snowy Ithaca to see this show and for supporting everything that I do; Andrew for your voice acting and for the conversations that started much of this work; Diego, Sam, and Qichao for your help coding, debugging, soldering, troubleshooting and just in general getting Metadata Hotline to work - I could not have done it without you; all the art seniors but especially Calvin, Cierra, Diego, Joanna, Joy, Jun, Jung-ho, Natani, Sam, and Xu for being supportive, establishing a real sense of community, and always being there to talk (or complain) over the years; Elisabeth Meyer and Renate Ferro for helping me develop my arts practice over the last few years and for always being around for a crit; Bob Bertoia, Jerry Birchfield, Bill Gaskins, and Jolene Rickard for your help and encouragement this semester; Lindsey Glover, Andre Hafner, Rich Jaenson, Chris Oliver, and Steve Yaros for helping me with the technical, logistical, and mechanical details of installing this show; Carla Bahn, Ann Beyer, Brennen Feint, and everyone else at the Fine Arts Library helping me get the equipment I needed; and the Rawlings Cornell Presidential Research Scholars Program for generously funding my work.