James Fuentes: Why three flags and three chairs?

William S. Stone: Three is kind of a ceremonial number, thus the three flags and the three chairs - trinity triumvirate etc. Flags are often displayed in threes.

The chairs are school chairs, pedantically labeled. But in the piece and in reality the executive is blurring the boundaries between the three branches of government - sort of holding them in a double head lock. Even in the formal patriotic display the reality becomes evident.

Participatory Democracy------- [Flag w/ button for wind effect in case]

WSS: The only old piece in the show. I made this piece in 1992 during the Bush-Clinton race.
I saw all these people waving flags at political rallies and i realized that for most people (the typical consumer not even involved in local politics), that is all his participation is about - wave the flag and pull the lever every four years.

What I like about the piece is that some dimwit patriotic right winger might like the piece. He would keep pressing the button (like a Buddhist spinning a prayer wheel), to gain some patriotic Karma.
Although the piece is over ten years old it seems to become more and more relevant.
The date I give for the piece is 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. The piece traveled in a flag show that created a lot of controversy and threats of loss of public funding for the museums that hosted the show. It of course was not this piece but the more obvious pieces that caused the controversy - like the flag made of human skin, or the Dred Scott piece where you walked on the flag.

Positional Asphyxiation------- [Torn flag w/ child's chair & tag]

The prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan, according to the coroners reports, died from positional asphyxiation. That is being paced in a position for a long time that stresses the muscles that move the diagram so much so that you stop breathing. This how Jesus died. The United States is in a state of impending positional asphyxiation.

The tag is like some sort of tag one would attach to a corpse. I have used chairs extensively in my work. A chair is the most anthropomorphic kind of furniture. One chair = one person. When referring of the capacity of restaurants and concert halls you talk of how many seats. In our consumer culture we all just seats to be sold. The obvious reference here is to some sort of multi tentacled sea creature that strangles us while supporting us. For me this is the most beautiful piece in the show, the shadows, the colors of chair and flag, the frozen moment.

Torture Chamber--------- [Black oil drum structure to be entered w/ DVD]

The piece is made of three 55 gallon drums, what in common parlance we would call oil drums. Here Bush on the brink of the Iraq invasion is saying that one of the reasons we are going to war is to eliminate Sadam's torture chambers and I guess in retrospect to replace them with our own. It is a torture chamber him saying "torture chamber" in the confined and tinny echoing space, he should drive you out. But stay in long enough and the words lose their meaning, they become just sounds --- a sort of mantra. In the oil drum we are imprisoned and tortured by our basic needs.

Plural Nounsssss--------- [DVD in walnut vitrine with speakers]

I have always been revolted by bushes lisp. It is particularly in evidence at the end of plural nouns where he seems to ad extra esses. Lists of bad things always come as plural nouns -- terrorists, clerics, weapons, diseases etc., also lions and tigers and bears... Even names of things not necessarily bad become loaded with innuendo in Bush's mouth.
Citizens are only one kind of citizen, the conservative kind. Here you are given only the solid subject matter of the speeches. Even without the other parts of speech you get the meaning of the speeches. Some of bushes speeches have fewer plural nouns than others. The most bellicose speeches have the greatest number of plural nouns. Here I have isolated bush in a vitrine -- a museum curiosity or a case for a serpent.

In this show I have tried to bring to political art a visual elegance and humor. I am placing the political for now at the center of my work, as opposed the the throw away political art that artists make in response to a a crises.