Transmuting Systems of Chaos
I create works on paper obsessively examining systems of power. Using
Army study guides, training manuals, operational maps, and military magazines
collected when I served as a combat helicopter pilot in the US Army, I fracture these
indoctrinating materials, dissolving textual military technology, and subverting its
mechanisms. Immersed in dystopian landscapes, they exist within theatres of
conflict and violence. Drawing from memory triggered by the documents, I define
moments of complete chaos. Military machines and specters of Afghanistan’s
landscape merge in a violent silence, interpreted through various traces of ink,
pencil, paint and paper. The works are intended to interrogate the ideological
apparatuses of dominance and the military industrial complex as a means to resist,
reconstitute and recontextualize their functions, and take onus of the past.