Friday, March 02, 2007

Stephen Marc's Artistic Statement:

I selected Haiku #5, because I was immediately drawn to the relationship of water and people, in regards to freedom. The Atlantic was the body that connected the Old and New Worlds, and the spirit that witnessed the transportation of the enslaved to an unimaginable place and destiny. The words of the spiritual, "God's gonna trouble the water", was evoked in Haiku #5, playing on the emotional / physical response of the water as the reflection of the ethical and political battle that surrounded the 1807 treaty.

The montage that I created was a response to this reading, but it also shows that the kidnapping didn't cease. The 1807 law that went into effect in 1808, in both England and the United States, still had to be aggressively defended and upheld 50 years later: suggesting that in addition to legal measures and military force, the moral value of human life must be understood and respected. But, even today, we continue to make waves.

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