Patenting Distraction

2018 | 38in x 47in each | hand-cut vinyl on acrylic panel with printed vinyl wallpaper

Elijah Wheat Showroom | Brooklyn, New York (2018)

Geary Contemporary | Untitled Art Fair | San Francisco (2020)

Patenting Distraction is a series of 6 drawings based on patent schematics for directed-energy weapons—weapons which utilize beams of highly focused energy waves to incapacitate a target—used by US military and police. These weapons are used for both for deterring “enemy combatants” in Iraq and Afghanistan and crowd control during protests. The work uses the idea of incapacitation through visual / sonic overload as a metaphor for both contemporary political discourse and rampant consumerism in the US. The ‘Figure’ of each diagram corresponds to a popular media soundbite or phrase relating to American ideology while the diagrams’ components detail the historical context of power and exploitation underlying each phrase's logic.

The panels of hand-cut vinyl are hung 6” in front of custom moire wallpaper, which was designed to create an analog glitching effect when viewers walk past each work. This visual instability echos the instability of “truth” in an era of spectacular propaganda, white-washed history and rampant consumerism.