Re/declarations
Jul’21
Computational Poetry, Exhibition
Website
San Francisco / Silo Gallery, Santa Barbara
Re/declarations was a collaboration with friends Chase McCoy and Evan Stites-Clayton and digital poetry collective The Verse Verse. The declaration of independence marked America's exit from the British Empire. Re/declarations are an invitation to depart again, break from today's America and embrace a redefined nation.
Collaborative Computational Poetry
Re/declarations posits that a revolution never concludes. A country is an eternal dream dreamt by all its people, old and new. Out of the 56 signatories of the original declaration, 8 were immigrants. None were Natives. The project is an invitation to reconsider how founding power is held and wielded. By reclaiming bits of the old declaration, visitors take ownership of this nation's founding document and redeclare the country. Re/declarations resets and corrects the beginnings of this country by giving all of its parts a voice.
Re/declarations invites visitors to reinterpret the Declaration of Independence. It encourages expression of personal values and addressing current societal issues. It highlights democracy's evolving nature and individual voices' importance. The new signatories select the words and sentences of the Declaration that speak to them.
Their selections became a collective creative erasure of the past, a revealing of new meaning potentials within the original document and a seeding of kernels of unexplored futures. As the project evolved, the new Declaration evolved into a marked and colorful document, a communitarian revision of the original where each signatory can claim a literal space and a color.
Exhibition
Re/Declarations was part of a solo exhibition at Silo Gallery. The 2 larger piece were sold to local collectors. The work was covered by several publications and some local news outlets eg. The Santa Barbara Independent.