"Perhaps in the end you will find that anonymity and death
are the same." - Alfred Schutz |
Within and Without (2014 - Current) examines the unknowable figure of alleged presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Following the pathways traversed by Oswald more than fifty years ago, this work considers the contrast between the public construction of the man and the man himself, documenting the material and ephemeral remnants of his past as they currently exist. While many tangible traces of Oswald have disappeared into obscurity or have been augmented in response to continued interest in the Kennedy assassination, a spectral tension remains. The spectacle of the assassination still draws tourists to the former Texas School Book Depository and the confluence of Elm, Commerce, and Houston passing below. Spectators can even look down onto the street from the sniper's vantage point to observe a white "X" marking the roadway to designate the location of the kill shot.
On November 24th 1963, two days after JFK's death, Oswald was shot on live television, witnessed by millions of Americans. Having issued no confession, analysis of the man who was simultaneously lone assassin, patsy, Marxist, defector, government agent, father, and son; sat unfixed the center of a conspiratorial hysteria. The events of that afternoon in November and the associated sites continue to linger in the American subconscious, exploited by conspiracy theorists and arm chair detectives. Spaces Oswald had passed through, objects in possession, and recollections of his presence; suddenly gained an unexpected significance, transforming into evidentiary relics, pilgrimage sites, and keys to accessing his motives. Within and Without seeks to subvert the aura created around Oswald, instead examining the lost spaces of his past, considering the significance of these locations now existing without a memory of their former tenant; banal spectacles of a remote personal history, housing only the intangible memories of the dead. |