2007/8
Sound installation with framed digital print and PA speaker
Dimensions variable
23 5/8×20 1/8 in (print)

For eight days between December 1, 2007 and January 12, 2008, I walked from The New Museum at Bowery and Prince Sts in lower Manhattan to a different site of public address such as Union Square, Tompkins Square, Confucius Square in Chinatown, and Christopher Street Park. Stopping at street corners every few blocks and speaking a single, repeated love address to an anonymous and unnamed lover, the performance text draws from sources such as De Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, and slogans from early Gay Liberation Day parades in New York City, the love address uses so-called private speech to get to the emotional imbrication of promise and disappointment in collective political action.

Part of a series of works dealing with the relationship between personal and political desire and between love and politics, I March in the Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I Am Not Free, raises questions about war, the emotional landscape of protest actions and public speech.

Each performance was recorded on audio. These recordings then compose an audio installation that redelivers the work to a secondary audience. This re-distributions is a critical component of my work. In this case, the live events transform into a secondary event in which the audio addresses other listeners/viewers through a single PA speaker that stands-in for the non-absent body of the performer.