An Appendix
“Star-Spangled Serpent”
“Struggle Borne”
“Struggle Borne” is a black and white photographic digital-collage containing 24 historical photographs arranged in an overlapping layout. The images document various aspects of hardship, poverty, and social struggle from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The documentary style photographs of the Depression-era capture both individual portraits and the broader social and material conditions in which the existed. The collage arrangement intends a narrative of perseverance through difficult circumstances, yes, but also seeks to illuminate the realities of life for those who are born and die under the yoke of extractive Capitalism. The title "Struggle Borne" reinforces themes of endurance and survival in the face of adversity.
“Unskilled Workforce”
"Unskilled Workforce" is a black and white photographic digital-collage composed of 46 historical photographs arranged in an overlapping montage format. The images document labor, employment struggles, and working conditions, spanning from the early to mid-20th century.
The collage documents the collective experience of manual laborers, seasonal workers, and the unemployed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The arrangement emphasizes themes of economic hardship, the search for work, and the struggles of those dependent on physical labor and deskilled by predatory agriculture and banking barons. The title "Unskilled Workforce" reflects the classification and challenges faced by workers without specialized training during periods of economic inequality and industrial monopolization.
“Alternative Media”
Featuring various historical publications, newspapers, and media materials represent counterculture, radical, and independent press from different eras of United States history, “Alternative Media” underlines how information sharing protected and politically empowered marginalized communities during the most oppressive periods of our history.
The materials span different time periods and movements, representing various forms of alternative journalism, activist publications, and independent media that provided perspectives outside mainstream, imperial press/publications. The collection evokes themes of social justice, pro-peace sentiment, civil rights, and grassroots communication during periods of social and political pressure in American history.
“Letters Home”
This is a historical collage titled "Letters Home" featuring eight vintage postcards documenting lynchings in the United States, arranged in a 4x2 grid on a cream-colored background and designed to resemble a vintage postcard format.
The images show scenes of racial violence and lynching from the late 19th/early 20th century American South. These postcards are actual historical artifacts documenting and commemorating acts of racial terrorism, often featuring crowds of white spectators gathered around victims. Such postcards were commonly produced, sold, and mailed through the U.S. postal system during this period, the promotion and celebration of racial violence in American society a trivial normality for the White majority.
"Letters Home" foregrounds how these disturbing images were literally sent as correspondence between family members and friends, documenting one of the most horrific chapters in American history as common curios then and relevant analog now. This collage serves as historical evidence of systemic racial violence and the commercialization of lynching as obscene domestic tourism; racist terrorism as an economic and social driver, perpetuated through the social mediums of the time.
“Im Westen nichts Neues”
"Im Westen nichts Neues” / “In The West Nothing New" is a photographic digital-collage composed of historical newspaper clippings and headlines documenting racial violence and civil unrest in American history.
The newspapers span from the late 19th through mid-20th centuries, documenting systematic racial terrorism including lynchings, race riots, forced migrations, and mob violence against Black and Mexican Americans. Some clippings include statistical information about lynching numbers and maps showing affected regions, the data displayed as sports or stocks today.
The literal German translation of the title creates a juxtaposition, referencing the famous anti-war novel while presenting America's record of ignoring internal racial warfare throughout our history. This collage serves as historical documentation of the extensive newspaper coverage of racial violence, showing how such events were reported in mainstream media during periods of intense racial terrorism in American history and belying the idea that such extreme violence was anything other than normal in the general public.
“Race Riot”
"Race Riot" is a photographic digital collage containing 38 photographs and illustrations documenting racial violence and civil unrest in American history, primarily from the late 19th through mid-20th centuries.
The collage documents major racial pogroms and massacres in American history, including events like the Tulsa Race Massacre, Red Summer riots, Detroit riots, La Matanza, and other instances of racial violence that destroyed marginalized communities and businesses across the United States empire. Many images show the systematic destruction of prosperous Black neighborhoods, often referred to as "Black Wall Streets." Others display the violence perpetrated against Indigenous/Native American, Asian, and Mexican communities throughout the various expansions of the imperial United States’.
This collection serves as visual documentation of the persistent nature of racial violence in America, showing how racial tensions repeatedly erupt into organized destruction of marginalized communities, property, and lives. The compilation represents one of the darkest recurring themes in American social history - the violent suppression and destruction of economic and social progress for any but the Liberal majority.
“Special Military Operation”
"Special Military Operation" is a photographic digital collage documenting various military conflicts, atrocities, and war crimes committed by the United States across different time periods and locations.
The title "Special Military Operation" highlights the euphemistic language used to describe military actions while minimizing their true nature, connecting the contemporary “Not Wars” of today with those used to oppress and occupy Peoples across time. It presents stark evidence of the brutal realities of genocide and military violence exercised first in the name of Manifest Destiny, and now for the noble ideas of “Freedom, Prosperity, and Equality.”
This compilation serves as documentation of the human cost of occupation, showing the gap between sanitized official language and the actual violence and atrocities committed to maintain an increasingly tenuous status quo. The images represent some of the darkest moments in human history where military power was used to abuse, oppress, and subjugate civilian populations from West Virginia to Vietnam, Greenwood to Abu Ghraib, Porvenir to the Philippines islands.