WE ARE HAUNTED BY THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST
May 4-5, 2024
Howard Skrill and I produce work examining ideas/ memes both active, and ones consigned to the dust heap of history. Following our collaboration at last year’s Gowanus Open Studio, Howard, Mary Skrill and I are again showing together at my studio. We have all produced new bodies of work since then.. Follow us as we work out our collaborations in the coming weeks.
Our Gowanus Open Studio 2023 collaboration merged the universal (me) and the particular (Howard)
I began at the beginning of the universe, moved to the present, and asked if there were universal principles that led away from authoritarianism to democracy, eliminating would-be Kings, like Donald Trump. Howard focused on the instance of the Civil War and the removal of the “Lost Cause” Monuments that aimed to keep white supremacy alive in the US.
Following Gowanus, I aimed to create a replacement in the videos for Howard’s Civil War imagery with Eve as a slave, resisting the slave owner, played by archetypal misogynist. The Former Guy
That moved on to making Eve the center of ALL stories: What if Eve, a black female, replaced the biblical figures: Moses, Joshua, etc, and even Jesus?
What if The Former Guy became the stand-in for all the bad guys, …the good guys? Both"? eg Cain and Abel, Satan, Pharaoh, the Money Changers at the Temple, the Roman Emperor Constantine….
You get the idea. However things quickly become complicated.
So does ancient history has any relevance to now? When Howard and I began talking, he provided the theme that ties our work together: “Haunted by Ghosts of the Past”.
How do we escape the haunting? By reinterpreting the old (but very much still alive) stories.
So:
The Book of Eve
1. The Garden of Eden: This telling of the Garden Of Eden story, loosely follows the theologian Teilhard deChardin's notion that Eve is the mother of consciousness. To be conscious is to have freedom to make choices for good and evil. God gives Eve the Apple, and tells Eve to care of his creation. This actually follows Jewish and early Christian understandings of the meaning of Genesis. It’s freedom, and responsibility to make moral choices.
The present understanding of Genesis is an invention of St. Augustine in the 5th Century. In it, evil is largely based on lust, and Eve is the Original Sinner, seducer of Adam,
Eve has her work cut out to correct the story.
2. Cain and Abel. Moral quandries? There’s the first MURDER, based on jealousy of God’s favor. It’s never explained why God doesn’t accept the sacrifices of both men, which sets up the conflict.
Eve gets no answer from God about his choice. (The question is not even asked). But as interactions with God continue, Eve begins to question God’s motives.
One of my old bosses, a former Israeli kibbutzinik, says this is a story about water rights. Biblical scholars tend to agree that its a story about conflict between farmers and herders.
I make at an ecological fable that drives present day Middle East conflicts - depletion of the region’s aquifers. Hmm, God favored wrong one?
Coming:
Eve becomes Moses,
3. leading her people out of Egypt,
4. climbing the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, and returning to find her people reverting to worship of Canaanite fertility gods. (That seems to imply a relationship with the Canaanites that has implications for what follows.)
5. The mythical Battle of Jericho, where Eve is Joshua…. and has more questions of God..
(If you’re interested in what’s coming and the process, much of the preliminary work is posted on my Instagram page.)