Installation, video 3 min. (loop) and used clothing, WIndsor, Ontario, 2000.
A small monitor (3 inches) was suspended to the back wall of a disfunctional freight elevator filled with clothing. A viewer would have to wade through piles of clothing to see the image.

North America's consumptive, cannibalistic culture of excess becomes unbearable if you spend enough time away from it, living in non-affluent societies such as those of the former Eastern Bloc. Coming back to 25 kinds of apples, 30 kinds of toothpaste, 40 kinds of cereal, hundreds of instantly-recognisable corporate logos, huge enclosures replacing a once-vibrant downtown with 120 chain stores selling the same products, "the good life" becomes bewildering, disorienting, disenchanting.

Witnessing the widespread belief in rabid consumption as worthwhile pursuit, I am myself consumed. I try to escape but... I want those shoes, I will be a better person if I could just get those shoes, I want those pants, I know I could get the job if I could just get those pants, if I lost just 10 pounds I know I would find love eternal. Imagination extinguishes itself on the screens of consumer culture; neurotic and diseased, the marching orders are "start me up, be all that you can be, get ahead, feel the freedom, stay connected, obey your thirst, have it your way, just do it!"

We live in a world where the continuous noise of marketers is, in fact, mostly visual, with the production and consumption of images become core activities of daily life. How is an individual integrated into this system? What power or control can they have once encased within the systems of signification?

"Blind Ambition" is an exploration of participation in a consuming culture. Engrossed in an endless neurotic activity, the character in the video repeats herself compulsively. Removing layer after layer of clothing, she undresses, but never reaches her own skin. She can never get underneath all of those layers; and though she has become lost, she nonetheless perseveres. There is a nightmarish quality to the project, of someone stuck in a loop of obsessive activity. This video was installed in a freight elevator on a very small screen (4x5 inches). The floor was strewn knee deep with articles of clothing. For a visitor to view the video, she or he had to wade through the clothes to reach the screen on the other side of the elevator. There is a direct relationship between the physical objects and the activity of the character onscreen. Are those the clothes she has been taking off for the last five, ten, fifteen hours? Slow motion focuses on the possibilities in a detail. Attention within the close up limits the field of reference. The focus is on the activity, changing yet remaining the same. Is there knowledge to be gleaned from repetition?