This portfolio is one of twelve fictional episodes involving a
churchgoing father and son. Each part of the story is assembled out of
the memory or use of a machine they have in common. The artists'
book of the same name gets its title from the post-9/11 United States,
just after the attacks, when the phrase "God Bless America"
was omnipresent. The project points to two metaphors for the machine:
that it resembles the mind and that it lacks humanity. The reference to
religion plays a large part in the mind-machine metaphor. For instance,
we may think of religious zealots as machines in that they are often
hardwired and programmed through subjective readings of historical
texts. Of course, we are aware that certain groups understand texts of
the past to be prophecies of the future; millions of people believe in
an afterlife and this belief dictates their contemporary existence. I
see this as a form of machine-like automation. This automated state is
explored in the book through the use of Christian propaganda. Tracts are
printed ephemera: short-lived, freely circulated, often meant to alarm,
instruct, and convert those who encounter them. In the book, pictures
from such religious tracts provide arbitrary signifiers literally drawn
as circuit lines to parts of the story. All of the images seen here came
from an archive found in a filing cabinet, bought second-hand in
Rochester, New York, by photographer Luke Strosnider who was unaware of
the hundreds of propaganda items inside. The book, God Bless this
Circuitry, is available from Preacher's Biscuit Books
(www.preachersbiscuitbooks.com) and contains an accompanying CD of music
by Andrew Sallee.
Nearly every morning I unzip a wrinkled, leather case to withdraw
my father's electric razor. With one breath I clear a coating of
white skin dust left from the previous day's shave.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In these standing moments, when I reached my full height, my head
would flash in the actual mirror reminding me of my smoother,
less-traveled face without the surfacing map-lines of blood.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Lack of circulation would routinely force me out of my crouch.
I kneeled on the tile before him.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
My father would be seated on the toilet in heavy cream light.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The more time I spent staring at his growing nose and ears, or the
unpleasant paths of blue, red, and purple lines, the further I felt from
the reality of my own appearance.
My face was not repeated in my father's. In fact, there were
no exactly similar parts, only exactly similar actions,
Sunday-to-Sunday, sanding him down, studying his features.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
I scrub at my cheeks with the spinning blades inserting my
fingertips now and then to judge for smoothness.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Once, with the razor buzzing before my eyes, I saw the Christian
Trinity symbol in the circular blades.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
For the next few minutes, rather than shave my face, I was
determined to make the three-conjoined-circles-shape somewhere on my
body:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
in a patch on my arm, a plot on my chest, on the crest of my
stomach.
I worked at the areas my clothing would hide, but the razor
couldn't get at the longish body hairs.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Back when I used to shave my father for church, my face would be
very close to his.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Instead it flattened swaths or yanked out snippets. No trinity
shape (or any discernible other, for that matter) could be made with the
electric razor.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
COPYRIGHT 2007 Visual Studies
Workshop Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Copyright 2007, Gale Group. All rights
reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.