On the voting day for the general election I attempted to create something positive. With questions surrounding the sovereignty of Ireland as the IMF draws the nation into a seemingly never ending debt I feel the urge to transcend the monetary worth of what we share and go a little deeper. I used real lawn turf to work with and then spent a few hours cutting the letters out before leaving them unattended for the rest of the day. I chose the front of the GPO and the artwork served as a subject to draw people into conversation.
Alex Steffen uses the written word to far greater affect than I and the following piece is taken from a text that has inspired me for years.
“Optimism is a political act
Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another. Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in Western popular culture, but, in reality, cynicism in average people is the attitude exactly most likely to conform to the desires of the powerful – cynicism is obedience.”
The pictures were taken by James Moloney
