Artist Statement

Spook^™ lyrically extends and technologically upgrades the tradition of Neo-classical history painting exploited by Jacques-Louis David.  It is inspired by David’s lasting images of Napoleon and the age of revolution.  Spook^™ operates in critical dialog with David’s example.  I recover an obscured fragment using rigorous historical research techniques; the true story of James Armistead Lafayette - his role as the double agent / slave that helped to end the American Revolution.  Then like Fred Wilson, I create an ironic, questionable reality.  The formulaic memory changes, requiring a re-assembly of our notion of the American Revolution and founding fathers.

Like Warhol’s production crucible, the factory, Spook™ is a vehicle that uses the screen test, auditions and film production techniques as a medium to create “super stars” in a distorted, highly crafted, bubble.  It engages the broadest audience possible and then transforms them in public space into the focus of an artwork.

Memory is alchemy. Recalling a recent moment or hazy event from the distant past requires a murky formula consisting of, image retrieval, conscious mediation, synthesis and utter fabrication. The image is inherently unstable.  Memory, personal or social, becomes the act of ordering incomplete pictures.  Spook™ reshapes what is both close at hand and historically distant in a Sisyphean feedback loop.  History and perception are used as creative tools.  The process creates an open ended, non-narrative, feature film production environment that is both an engaging critique of guerilla warfare in our insurgency, the American Revolution, and a relevant, current, social document.

The Spook^™ Experiment is the only source available to collect and provide detailed information on James Armistead Lafayette’s participation as a double-agent in the American Revolution.  It seems natural to want to share it.  Spook™ creates a space to view it as a multimedia artwork.  It combines scholarly research and historical documents, with more seductive and ephemeral media objects about James to give greater exposure to the subject of an outrageous historical erasure.  The project gives viewers the opportunity to engage this unique story, a slave’s eye view, literally recasting, the story of the struggle to grasp freedom in America.