Summer of Change: Distribution of 1000 Roosevelt Dimes
rhetoric

At high noon September 13, a man rolls onto Wall Street in a wheelchair, dismounts, and painfully makes his way up the steps of the Federal Building to speak to the American people:  "It is high time we speak frankly/ Of the current crisis threatening our Democracy/ The very state of the world today is a summons for us to stand together/ And to Act against injustice/ For this very spot, my friends/Is the site of a heinous crime..." What heinous crime was committed on Wall Street?  Come to the performance to find out!  You'll meet the Common Man and hear of his anger, hopes, and dreams for the future.  And, of course,  this will be followed by the usual showering of coins on Wall Street that you have come to know as the Summer of Change. Please join us for the fourth performance of the Summer of Change: the Distribution of 1000 Dimes.  ..."progressive government by its very terms, must be a living and growing thing, that the battle for it is never ending and that if we let up for one single moment or one single year, not merely do we stand still but we fall back in the march of civilization." --FDR   

09/13/2011
Distribution of 400 Washington Quarters
rhetoric

George Washington, father of the nation, marched onto Wall Street at high noon on August 25th, 2011 to distribute the coins that bear his visage, and to dialog with the Common Man; a soldier in his revolutionary army.  This man, dressed in rags, relates how he was fleeced by Wall Street Investers who cashed in on war bonds.  Standing on the plaza with the people, the Common Man yells for economic fairness.  The father of the nation responds:Every American by their bootstraps pull/ Along this lively meritocracy/ What you ask for/ Is too much democracy!

08/25/2011
Pop Ark
rhetoric

Pop Ark is in search of a stimulating approach to life after global warming. What is happiness when drowned polar bears are washed ashore because they could not find a piece of ice to save them? And when you can no longer trust the sun?

Like Al Gore’s much discussed film “An Inconvenient Truth”, “Pop Ark” is at once a slide show, rhetorical seduction, and mechanical theater. A lo-tech juke box style machine that drives the sprawling installation makes do with motors, gears, and seven kilobytes. Inside the Ark one discovers a creative zone conceived as a geodesic commune based on Youtube, whose teenage video bloggers inspired this work with their rambling thoughts on global warming. A vessel; put together with language, light spectacle and Bill Cosby, on a perilous journey towards a merciful sun.
Pop Ark: by New York artist Noah Fischer in collaboration with sculptor Prem Makeig (NY) and musicians Gregoire Paultre (FR) and Ronnie Bass (NY).

Pop Ark at Kunstenfestivaldesarts

05/22/2008
Rhetoric Machine
rhetoric

Rhetoric Machine is a two-room kinetic installation that appropriates the language of movies, television, radio, and speechmaking. Presidential speeches and emotionally laced pop songs serve as the soundtrack for a sculptural light show that marches through the last sixty years, what many would call the golden age of American history. American icons such as an eagle, a tank, and a television set react variously to the soundtrack, creating what Sergei Eisenstein called an "intellectual montage" where jarring associations between light and sound lead to new meaning constructions, often charged with emotion. With this work Fischer asserts, “the ancient art of rhetoric has not been lost - it has been transformed. We may associate rhetoric with a politician standing at a podium, delivering a speech with which we either agree or disagree. But behind the podium there are the hissing speakers, the buzzing screens, and the rumbling engines of an expansive Rhetoric Machine. This machine has been built to mold around us a persuasive version of reality, one that we accept before we have the chance to examine it.”

11/30/2006