Confessions from the imperial Core

2021

Exhibited at:
Agatha’s

Press:
Julia Dzwonkoski, Trip Out With Mice (Cornelia Magazine, Issue 9)

As I prepared for an exhibition at Agatha’s it struck me repeatedly that the confession booth has, obviously, long been a site for the repression and manipulation of victims of trauma. I do not want to diminish nor demean the experience of victims of church abuse, but I do want to draw a connection between that trauma and the experience of trauma on a national scale, the kind which follows in the wake of catastrophic — and frequently inadequately explained — political events. I am referring to some of the big ghosts of the post-war American subconscious: the political assassinations of the 1960s, the scandal of Watergate, 9/11, etc.

With regard to these subjects it has become taboo even to raise the possibility, perhaps now most especially for self-identifying “liberals,” that some of the explanations which run counter to the official narratives of these events not only well account for the inadequacies and obfuscations of the official reports, but may, in fact, offer a more adequate accounting of the people and forces which led to them. These counternarratives — for example that the assassination of JFK was brought about by the complex web of political and financial interests shared by the oil industry, the American mafia, and the military-intelligence apparatus; or that Watergate was something done to Richard Nixon and not by him; or that 9/11 was not only a spectacular display of blowback for American anti-Soviet and oil adventurism in the Middle East but was an event which may have been allowed to proceed because it benefitted the interests of American empire — have a long life in the public record, but are generally either forgotten about or dismissed out of hand as “conspiracy theories.” — Nando Alvarez-Perez, Exhibition Essay