THE SLEEP OF REASON (2003-4)
Influenced by Edmund Burke’s writing on the sublime, and expanding upon the sublime threatening skies of artists like William Turner and Richard Misrach, The Sleep of Reason combines nationalistic symbolism with abstraction. This video installation reworks the iconic 1991 CNN nightscope footage of the bombing of Baghdad. Time-reversed Fourth of July fireworks morph into a delicate hand-traced version of the Baghdad footage, reminiscent of a Ross Bleckner painting. That abstractly rendered war then dissolves into even more abstract, computer generated lights. This conflation of hand drawn, digital, and live action images highlights the abstract experience of war, remote from actual sites of violence.