DOUBLE HELL

DOUBLE HELL is a conceptual narrative told through a sequence of photographs, in which the viewer finds themselves caught between the reductive authoritarianism of Western society and the magical violence of an unknowable supernatural innocence.

Barely hidden under the surface of our culture is a failed choice between fear and love. Despite this, we search our histories for reasons to live, even blindly, as our bodies are propelled forward into dehumanization, numbness, repressed puritanical minimalism, and congruence of identities. Conversely, our innocence is found in the beauty of disorder and obscenity. A once vibrant chaos was betrayed by this failure to choose love, and we entered into what Martin Luther King, Jr called "a poverty of the spirit (which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance)". That spirit has become so charred that we are in a state of no longer distinguishing between suffering and joy, yet we continue the struggle, generating new meaning in the process.

The hunger for conquest over the wildness of the human spirit is never-ending, and we have betrayed ourselves like willing prey under the promise of comforts that will never come. The value of our lives has been reduced to our ability to work, to produce, and to be consumed by the aggression of the ruling class. Aggression has become the fuel that begets power - power that begets more aggression, cycling like an addiction for the reduction of human life to dust.

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This work, in part, attempts a criticism of Western visual culture: that artists and producers of cultural materials do not have ideas, as much as they express priorities. Those priorities are often unknowingly imbued into their products. When photography obsesses over rigidity, simplicity, and cleanliness, those priorities expand subconsciously in the minds of audiences. What does the rejection of dust and noise, for example, in mainstream photography say about our attitudes towards the "unclean" or "disunited" parts of our society? The working class, the unhoused, the HIV positive, the disabled, transgender? This work attempts to champion imperfection as an expansive embrace of humanity in all of its forms.

Contained in this application are multiple iterations of this project. The "flip-through video" presents the original draft artist-book, comprised of six signatures housed within a "slip case" of expanded steel and bolts, sealed under lock and key. The attached PDF represents a more focused rethinking of this work.