A Biblical promise…
But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not
therefore…
is a threat in the age of surveillance.
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch:
I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train…
Evidence can be gathered on any life. If the state seeks, it will find, and hope of oblivion will be a romance.
Sade, from Marat Sade:
And when I vanish
I want all trace of my existence
to be wiped out…
Kevin Van Aelst tracks the trace evidence of himself, as if he were his own detective examining his own crime scene.
I first saw Van Aelst’s work accompanying Virginia Heffernan’s NYT’s blog, The Medium, her excellent examination of Internet culture which after today will be part of the NYT’s ArtsBeat, the NYT’s attempt to compete with the LA Times’ Culture Monster.
Van Aelst obliterates the distinction between art and illustration. Below is his take on the subject of art theft (Heffernan’s story here.) An illustration needs the story. Van Aelst’s illustrations are the story.
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