Ellen de Bruijne

Jeremiah Day

26 Nov 2005 - 07 Jan 2006

DOLORES:

Jeremiah Day
For Us The Living/Period of Reflection
26 November – 7 January

Jeremiah Day's work is marked by a persistent attempt to link ephemeral moments of revelation to a consciousness of political possibility. In his exhibition Day presents two works: a series of photographs, and a performance. Both evolved from a long meditation on the above quote by US political writer and township democracy activist HR Shapiro. By pairing two seemingly opposed figures like Guy Debord and Abraham Lincoln, Shapiro's one-liner is paradoxical and perplexing. For Day the `answer' Shapiro refers to seems to be found within one rhetorical turn of Lincoln's famous oration over the fallen of the US Civil War: "we cannot dedicate. rather it is for us the living to be dedicated."
`For Us The Living' is a series of photographs that emerged from a meditation upon these texts (some shot years ago, some shot only a few weeks ago).

Day will also perform a collaborative work with the band We Vs. Death that can be attended at the Bellamystraat 53 on Monday, the 21st at 7pm. This work is an epitaph to the American journalist Gary Webb who died in December, 2004.

The second part of the title of the exhibition, "Period of Reflection", refers to the official `period of reflection' declared by Jose Borroso after the French and Dutch `No' votes on the European Constitution this past summer. Day has asked the European Union Ministry of Culture for formal recognition that this exhibition does in fact constitute an object for reflection in a `period of reflection' on the European political project.
Negotiations are ongoing.

image:
"The answer to Debord's `Society of The Spectacle' is Lincoln's `Gettysburg Adress'."
- HR Shapiro
 

Tags: Jeremiah Day, Guy Debord, Gary Webb