Interference (Fools) (2020)

In the fall of 2019, the nation was consumed with Trump’s first impeachment trial. I was in the Mojave Desert during part of that time and I would come back from making images all day in the desert and sit at the group dining table at the National Park Service dorm, the TV playing some DVD or other for the thousandth time—there was apparently no cable or satellite dish available to the park employees here—and I would take screenshots off my computer, these forming the source images of this project, while making small talk with the park rangers slumped on the couch as they watched the television

The impeachment trial was an all-consuming moment in a seemingly never-ending string of all-consuming moments, the technologies of social media “engagement” (which is to say, addiction) combining in some abhorrent way with partisan politics. It was all we could talk about then but I can’t now remember what crimes and misdemeanors Trump was charged with. I suspect few people can.