"What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, out tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us."

-Georges Perec


A common retort leveled at those who engage in conversational nitpicking is, “…oh, that’s just semantics.” This phrase, “just semantics”, is indicative of the common belief that the meanings of words (and all signs) are natural, fixed, and self-contained. As the reading of most texts (including this one) shows, this is a reasonable position in practice. In order to function, we are required to treat the features of everyday life as given. Red means stop, green means go; traffic doesn’t tolerate further reflection; the narrative conventions of film and television must be second nature for ‘invisible editing’ to live up to its name; we must generally observe the standard terms and protocols of conversation and debate to avoid becoming bogged down in minutiae; etc. But however efficient these assumptions make day-to-day life, they also cause us to overlook the ways in which their meanings are constructed and how the larger structures of a culture are imbedded in its smallest parts.

It is these small and quiet parts of life, the everyday, that are the focus of my work. I present images and situations where seemingly insignificant details have been altered and destabilized, and the larger structures upon which their meanings are contingent have been made visible. It is at this molecular level of everyday life that the saturation of ideologies within a culture is most clearly revealed. The efficiency and ease provided by the conventions of everyday life are themselves evidence of their distance from the friction and uncertainty of the discourse that brought them into being. I introduce uncertainty into these situations in an attempt to return them to discourse, to put them in play. But it isn’t my intent to analyze signs and reveal some hidden meaning upon which to base any particular political, social, economic, or other position. Instead, my hope is that through these examples viewers will further develop their desire to read the world closely and their ability to navigate the semiotic and ideological currents that surround them, developing positions of their own.