Towards a Better Existence

2007 – 2009
Approximately 3,000 artist statements, 668 laser printed pages and sound.

The project title originates from a statement by artist Lawrence Weiner who said, “but we can’t judge anybody’s intent. We have to take it for granted that each person making art has a benevolent approach towards it. That each revolution is leading towards somebody’s aspiration towards a better existence. You’ve got to take that as a priori.”

For this project I noticed that artists who use a first person point of view, I and my, are taking genuine ownership for their ideas and art. Each sentence, extracted from the original artist statement, becomes part of an enhanced collective experience. The accompanying sound is of 69 different voices, left channel saying I and the right channel saying my. Each page was gridded into columns and if an I or my fell into that column the voice assigned to that column was activated or scored.