GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT
performance still
Instinct Gallery, Mpls, MN

The multi-media project, Universal Capital, examines and re-maps the propaganda, symbology, and territories of socio-economic cosmologies. It detourns the 17th century archive, the Harmonia Macrocosmica, which depicts the birth of capitalism with an island in the center of the world marked (Dutch East India) “company land”. Employing photojournalism, collage, and drawing, cartography’s overview is met with under-views of demonstrations, and alternative charts. From Wall Street to the Capitol, performances circulate the prints with spoken texts that challenge official histories. In installations, sculpture, sound-scores, and videos telescope between local economics and global power-structures. These employ materials sourced from their surroundings, plus portraits, interviews, and audience participation. Universal Capital’s immersive cosmologies exorcise the past against a language of shared production.

Gross Domestic Product
archival ink and paper, 2015-2018
20” x 24”, edition of 5
48" x 40", edition of 3

Gross Domestic Product (detail)

HD Video, 15"
5.16.2015
Instinct Gallery/Public Performance
Mpls, MN
performers: John Hauser, Megan Mayer, Sarah and Jesse Petersen, Sean Smuda, John Vance

“U”, HD video, 21’54”, 2020 (1” excerpt)

Potlatch
archival ink and paper, 2017
20” x 24”, edition of 5
48" x 40", edition of 3

Potlatch (detail)

Potlatch was performed on Presidents Day 2017 as part of Holly Hughes' nation wide event Not My Presidents Day via the Minneapolis chapter This Machine.

Common Ground
2018
mixed medium 9’ x 3’ x 2’
(destroyed in fire)

Deep State
archival pigment print, 2017
24" x 28" edition of five
48" x 40" edition of three

Deep State (detail)

w/ Rose Hauser
9.24.2017
HD video, 9’46”

Common Ground, 2018 (link to audio)
2018
mixed medium, 12’ x 6 x 5’
(destroyed in fire)

Commodity Fetish
archival ink and paper 2018
20” x 24”, edition of 5
48" x 40", edition of 3

Commodity Fetish (detail)

GPS is based on a dream about Stephen Hawking and re-writing the EU Constitution. It embodies interactions between analog and digital, individual and State. Differences between them are and their averaging determine and control consumer and political behavior.

HD Video, 12'36"
2.3.2014
Ritz Theater, Monday Live Arts
Mpls, MN
performer: Sean Smuda

Common Ground
2018
mixed medium, 9’ x 6 x 2’
(destroyed in fire)

Austerity
archival ink and paper, 2014-2015
20” x 24”, edition of 5
48" x 40", edition of 3

HD Video, 7'
3.10.2015
Cowles Center, Future Interstates series
Mpls, MN
performer: Sean Smuda

Austerity (detail)

Universal Capital
archival ink and paper, 2012 - 2015
24" x 13 1/2" edition of 5
48" x 27", edition of 3

HD video, 3'44"
11.9.2015
public performance, NY, NY
performer: Sean Smuda

Universal Capital (detail)

Target Classes
archival ink and paper, 2012-2019
20” x 24”, edition of 5
48" x 40", edition of 3

HD Video, 5'
10.30.2014
TuckUnder Projects
Mpls, MN
performer: Sean Smuda
participants: Aki Shiabata, Nate Young, Sheila Dickinson, Nick Vlcek

Target Classes (detail)
 

False Flags (2025 –) collapses and blends symbols and signs to re-write nationalistl narratives.

False Flags (2025 –) collapses and blends symbols and signs to re-write nationalistl narratives.

False Flags (2025 –) collapses and blends symbols and signs to re-write nationalistl narratives.

False Flags (2025 –) collapses and blends symbols and signs to re-write nationalistl narratives.

False Flags (2025 –) collapses and blends symbols and signs to re-write nationalistl narratives.

False Flags (2025 –) collapses and blends symbols and signs to re-write nationalistl narratives.

Linking organic and technical fluctuations between Dakar and Berlin.

Se Cacher du Soleil
The body is tired and does not know what it is or what it is doing

It wakes up as machine and drinks dance to study the labyrinth

It weaves with increasing concentration, the perfect architecture of the ancestors,

a fire that consumes itself to become air

and hide from the sun

Exploded View
132 × 84 cm
acrylic on felt
2024

Bundeskraft
135 x 90 cm
acrylic on felt
2024

Symbiotic Systems

My painting, performance, and interventions are attempts to examine the inequities of organic and manufactured environments and my complicit role in their function. I am fascinated by the mutable and symbiotic systems of body, nature, and technology, which I represent through imagery such as morphing cells and circuits. These forms exist between the mechanical and organic, performing and re-writing symbolic orders as they blur the boundaries between natural and constructed systems.

At the core of this work is the idea of navigating the labyrinth—finding ways of sensing a greater whole and growing within it while following a singular path. This concept extends to how cities develop, shaped by the interplay between nature and technology. In Dakar, this starts with the Baobab tree and the Pèc that surrounds it –a center of social, spiritual, and commercial activity. In Berlin, like most contemporary cities, this has been replaced by a decentralized grid, arranged primarily for efficiency and individual autonomy. These contrasting urban logics reveal different relationships between community, environment, and infrastructure.

My process engages these differences materially and publicly. Paintings are dragged through the streets of both cities, accumulating the dust, dirt, and traces of each environment. They are washed in local waters—the Atlantic in Dakar, the lakes in Berlin. Hung in public, the works provoke conversations with passersby, breaking down the barriers between art and everyday life. Through these actions, the paintings accrue material and history, becoming documents of the cities themselves while questioning how society functions with and against nature.

Dakar, SN, 2024

Exploded View (still from video)

Escape Velocity
acrylic on felt
135 x 90 cm
2024

painting interviews, Berlin

DAKAR
130 x 84 cm
sand, dirt, acrylic, salt on felt
2024

Architecture, Immateriality, Painting WIP in convo, Dakar, May 2024

Dakar in Mpls

Mbeubeuss OBE
acrylic and sand on felt
84 × 130 cm
2023 - 2024

Performance Chez-Toi Design, Partcours 12, Dakar, Senegal
December 8, 2023

Babacar’s Cart

In Senegal, the Pec is a communal, sacred space that grows around the Baobab tree. The increasing rarity of this in the city is discussed with art as a possible integration of technology and nature to create a similar space. Nov, 2023

Floating World
130 × 84 cm
Acrylic on Felt, 2025

Floating World
(detail)

Gottlieb
acrylic on felt
135 × 90 cm
2024

Gottlieb in situ

Cyclonopedia
mixed media on felt
130 x 84 cm
2023

Cyclonopedia performance still

Cyclonopedia in situ

Algorithm
acrylic on felt
130 x 84 cm
2024

Patti Smith Trauma
acrylic, sand, tobacco on felt
120 x 84 cm
2023

Wild Patch (Patti Smith Dream 1)
acrylic, sand, tobacco on felt
120 x 84 cm
2023

Badge
acrylic and scoring on felt
193 x 128 cm
2024

Badge (detail)

DARPA Auto Tune
acrylic on felt
130 x 84 cm
2023

Through the World
acrylic on felt
130 x 84 cm
2022 - 2023

Heart Motor (Merceds-366-A)
acrylic and marker on felt
135 x 84 cm
2022

Power Window
acrylic on felt
130 x 84 cm
2022

Factory Forest
mixed media on felt
135 x 84 cm
2022

Whale Citroen DL
acrylic and marker on felt
135 x 84 cm
2022

Firebird Mercedes Dakar
mixed media on felt
135 x 84 cm
2022

Bucket Seat AC
acrylic and marker on felt
135 x 84 cm
2022

Delorean Reactor
acrylic on felt
130 x 84 cm
2022

Himmelfahrt
mixed media on DDR table pad
138 x 84 cm
2021

The Berlin Coronnale is a map of the psycho-spatial effects of the COVID isolation, where one could go in public and what possible directions and interactions this new world held. For the first forty days of lockdown in Berlin, a daily performance video was made with improvised songs and movement as though Life depended on it.

GPS, HD video, 2’09”, 2019

Universal Capital (performance excerpts)
HD video, 2’52”
2017

Jazz Funeral for my home lost in a fire, May 27, 2018.

Mar 22, 2016

Improvisation at Treignac Project, FR, 2018

Blueprints are future memory machines, transports, events, apparitions that bridge environment with spiritual and political response to it. Sublime, entropic relationships of use-value and natural production. They are a summation of all I knew and didn’t know about the world: clichés, dreams, family stories, all went into the poems that entitle each piece and are embedded in them. From Esperanto to Ojibwe, seventeen languages in all; the process of translation informs the imagery after the fact.

archival pigment prints on aluminum, 2007 - 2011

번호 크 런칭으로 하늘을 청소하면 바다가 피 (한국) 보관 안료 및 아크릴을 태우는 동안 은퇴 운동이 중단되고 2010 년

Cleaning up Heaven with number crunching
holds retirement exercises at a standstill
while the ocean burns blood
(Korean)
2010

archival pigment print

الفجر، الأنى الأدنى يعيد تشكيل هندسة مستقبل في الحاجة إليه.مؤامرة تبادل الحرف بين العصابات قاسية ضد مسيرات الحب 2011

Phosphorous signatures, fusion centers, investigative protestors
At the global market stray bullets are recycled for geometry-of-need futures Where conspiracy gangsters exchange blunts against love vigils
(Arabic)
2011

archival pigment print

Die afkoeling matrix flappe dit vlerke in alle rigtings soos die kringloop stad skrape 'n moeder-of-god nietig in 'n tuin van diere byt sterte, 2010

The cooling matrix flaps its wings in all directions as
the recycling city scratches the void from
yards of animals biting tails
(Afrikaans)
2010

archival pigment print

Droimneach bolláin ar bharr ríochas teagasc na páistí déan i ciorcal, 2010

Rolling boulders on royalty
teaches children to sing and dance
in a constant loop
(Gaelic)
2010

archival pigment print

Ragazza blu, lasciare il fiume congelate e sposare mi, presa mi dalle sorgenti alla bocca, io sono tuo perché non teatro può tenere (per SR), 2010

Sad girl, leave the frozen river and marry me
Take me from the headwaters to the mouth,
I am yours because no theater can hold us
(Italian)
2010

archival pigment print

Wayaabishkiiwed akwaandawebizo ajidin aapijishin, 2010

White Man goes up fast
Holds it upside down
Falls hard
(Objibwe)
2010

archival pigment print

Glimt og hjertet eksploderer, polarisere til ukjente kart, det sperrer inne hjernen, 2009

Blink and the heart explodes
Polarized to maps
That erase the past
(Norwegian)
2009

archival pigment print

壊滅させられた自己が制御と名声を入れます、それが落ちる（とき・から・につれて・ように）それが再びそれ自身に会うまで、世界がエッジにおいて汚れます 2009

Obliterated self lets in control and fame
As it falls, the world blurs at the edges
Until it meets itself again
(Japanese)
2009

archival pigment print

Obrazy i zaniku traci sens, tylko ruch kamery posiada odsetek, w samym centrum burzy, 2008

Images fade and lose meaning
Only camera movement holds attention
In the center of the storm
(Polish)
2008

archival pigment print

Существует орган в местах, угнетению угнетателей, постепенно растет во всем мире, смеется, ясли, 2008

There is a body in the ground
Oppressing the oppressors
Slowly rising everywhere
Laughing in a crib
(Russian)
2008

archival pigment print

Lub sij hawm dau los lawm zuiz, los lus yuav tsum loov mus, qhib lub tawb tsau dab, taug tus dej ntawm peb ibsab, 2008

Recycling words buys time
to open cages for ghosts
to walk the river beside us
(Hmong)
2008

archival pigment print

Mi coche, su coche, mi identidad, su indetidad, en Berlin, Tokio, Nuevo Yorque, Londres, evolución ya basta, y mas, ya basta, ya mas..., 2008

My car, your car, my identity, your identity,
In New York, London, Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo
Evolution, no more, and more, no more, and more…
(Spanish)
2008

archival pigment print

Wirt deinen Kopf an die Sonne, zum den Friedhofsgarten zü befruchten, in der Stadt in der du stehst, 2007

Throw your head at the sun
To fertilize the graveyard garden
In the city where you stand
(German)
2008

archival pigment print

Sky bivouac
Hubris tour
Drop ceiling
(English)
2007

archival pigment print

J’ai gonflé mes amis avec des biscuits de beurre des cachouètes remplis d’hélium pour voir le monde, 2007

I inflated my friends with helium filled peanut butter cookies to see the world (French)
2007

archival pigment print

Butterfly wheel
Soaring heart
No pollution
(Chinese)
2007

archival pigment print

portfolio, archival pigment on aluminum, 13" x 19", edition of twenty, 2011, collection of the Walker Art Center

portfolio, archival pigment on aluminum, 13" x 19", edition of twenty, 2011, collection of the Walker Art Center

portfolio, archival pigment on aluminum, 13" x 19", edition of twenty, 2011, collection of the Walker Art Center

portfolio, archival pigment on aluminum, 13" x 19", edition of twenty, 2011, collection of the Walker Art Center

portfolio, archival pigment on aluminum, 13" x 19", edition of twenty, 2011, collection of the Walker Art Center

Clockwork Harmony,
Origin and end myths, possession, sacrifice, feeling,
Bugout or go to jail
(Esperanto)
2016

Clockwork Harmonio,
Origino kaj fino mitoj, posedo, bucxoferon emocio,
Bugout aŭ iri al malliberejo

Fatin Al Jumaily displays Blown Derivatives in Karbala, Iraq
photograph by Luke Wilcox of the Iraqi American Reconciliation Project, 2011

Papers that blew out of the World Trade Center during 9/11 were collaged with Blueprints as the basis for this international collaborative project. Blown Derivatives examines conditions and national identities ten years after the WTC events. Participants were invited to create pieces based on the project’s scattering of ashes and destinations. Ephemeral exhibitions were sent to: Antarctica, Iceland, China, Tibet, Iraq, and Pakistan, to hang outside until they disintegrated.

Seth Dauphin installs Blown Derivatives outside of McMurdo Base, Antarctica, 2009

Blown Derivatives, Pakistan macquette, 2012
(sent but not displayed)

Blown Derivatives in Karbala, Iraq
photograph by Fatin Al Jumaily, 2011

Blown Derivatives in Karbala, Iraq
photograph by Fatin Al Jumaily, 2011

Blown Derivatives in Karbala, Iraq
photograph by Fatin Al Jumaily, 2011

Blown Derivatives in Karbala, Iraq
photograph by Fatin Al Jumaily, 2011

Blown Derivatives in Karbala, Iraq
photograph by Luke Wilcox, 2011

Blown Derivatives outside of McMurdo Base, Antarctica, 2009

Blown Derivatives outside of McMurdo Base, Antarctica, 2009

Blown Derivatives outside of McMurdo Base, Antarctica, 2009

Participating artists L to R:
Sean Smuda, Daniel Kaniess, Janet Lobberecht, James Gladman, Abraham Renko 

James Gladman, Blown Derivative for Antarctica
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2009

Daniel Kaniess, Blown Derivative for Antarctica
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2009

Janet Lobberecht, Blown Derivative for Antarctica
11" x 17", embroidery, 2009

Abraham Renko, Blown Derivative for Antarctica
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2009

Sean Smuda, Blown Derivative for Antarctica
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2009

Anna-Marie Shögren installs Blown Derivatives in Skagaströnd, Iceland, 2010

Blown Derivatives
Skagaströnd, Iceland, 2010

Blown Derivatives
Skagaströnd, Iceland, 2010

James Gladman, Blown Derivative for Iceland
injket on paper, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

James Gladman, Blown Derivative for Iceland (two sided)
injket on paper, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Daniel Kaniess, Blown Derivative for Iceland
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Janet Lobberecht, Blown Derivative for Iceland
embrodery, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Abraham Renko, Blown Derivative for Iceland (the Tinkerbell effect)
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 17", 2010

Sean Smuda, Blown Derivative for Iceland
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Blown Derivatives at mouth of Yangtze River, China
photograph by Ping Wang, 2010

Blown Derivatives at mouth of Yangtze River, China
photograph by Ping Wang, 2010

Blown Derivatives at mouth of Yangtze River, China
photograph by Ping Wang, 2010

Margaret Coughlin, Blown Derivative for TIbet
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Jonathan Field, Blown Derivative for Tibet
plastic, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

James Gladman, Blown Derivative for China and TIbet
inkjet on canvas, 11" x 10", 2010

Daniel Kaniess, Blown Derivative for China and Tibet
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Abraham Renko, Blown Derivative for China and TIbet
cloth, 7" x 14", 2010

Sean Smuda, Blown Derivative for China and Tibet
mixed media on silk, 8 1/2" x 11", 2010

Ping Wang, Blown Derivative for China and Tibet
inkjet print on silk, 11" x 14", 2010

Blown Derivatives on Sela Mountain, TIbet
photograph by Ping Wang, 2010

Blown Derivatives on Sela Mountain, TIbet
photograph by Ping Wang, 2010

Blown Derivatives on Sela Mountain, TIbet
photograph by Ping Wang, 2010

Jame Gladman, Blown Derivative for Iraq
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2011

Jame Gladman, Blown Derivative for Iraq
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2011

Daniel Kaniess, Blown Derivative for Iraq
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2011

Janet Lobberecht, Blown Derivative for Iraq
mixed media, 81/2" x 11", 2011

Sean Smuda, Blown Derivative for Iraq
mixed media, 8 1/2" x 11", 2011

Ping Wang, Blown Derivative for Iraq
inkjet on silk, 11" x 16", 2011

Sanjin Cosabic, Blown Derivative for Pakistan
inkjet on canvas, 11" x 14", 2012

Daniel Kaniess, Blown Derivative for Pakistan
mixed media, 11" x 14", 2012

Daniel Kaniess, Blown Derivative for Pakistan
mixed media, 11" x 14", 2012

Abraham Renko, Blown Derivative for Pakistan
cloth, ink, 8 1/2"x 11", 2012

Sean Smuda, Blown Derivative for Pakistan
mixed media on silk, 8 1/2" x 11", 2012

Blown Derivatives
Fastnet Rock installation, 2014
mixed media, dimensions variable

Fastnet Rock
Installation at the Soap Factory, 2014
mixed media, dimensions variable

U (excerpts)
HD video, 20’, 2020

Part of U were shown at the Kurt Mühlenhaupt Museum Video Festival, Sept 26, 2020

23 North
HD video, 7’56”
2021
A dream that splits the world in two, balances it on a still point, then topples it. Memories of T.S. Eliot's WW2 poems are exhumed, illuminated by locomotive flashes. As the story unfolds, viewer and scene are merged.

The film has been shown in 2022 as part of Filmriss in Frankfurt (Oder) and the Verwalterhaus, Berlin

Installation and performance near Facebook HQ, Luleå, Sweden
2021
HD video, 1’23”

Invisible links drawn between environment and body

IN MEXICO, COLORS NEVER DIE!
Super-8 Transfer, 15’, 1995

Made driving to Chiapas, Mexico from Minneapolis, Minnesota to report on the Zapatista Guerillas. Calculating the number of miles to frames in rolls of Super-8 film, a frame a mile was shot on two cartridges, approximately 6,000 frames. It was then projected back at the slowest mechanical speed the Eiko-8 would allow.

CHIAPAS ‘95 –a history 

We leave Minneapolis in a Geo Prism on a bright, subzero January day, and head towards Chiapas, Mexico for the first anniversary of the Zapatista uprising. My colleague Jean-Marie’s goal is to interview the EZLN leader Subcommandante Marcos, mine is to photograph what comes. In January, 1994, the Zapatistas staged a coup against the exploitation of Chiapas by the North American Free Trade Association. They burned land records, freed prisoners, fought the army, and retreated to the Lacandon Jungle. Around three hundred people died. Our plan is to arrive during the anniversary of the cease-fire. Jean-Marie is working on a book about them and has driven the 4,000-mile roundtrip a few times. She needs the Marcos interview to finish it and go on talk shows. We practice Spanish and talk about Mexico, which I only know through a fascination with Day of the Dead and Huichol rituals. I’m naïve and my father has left me enough money to go. My girlfriend gives me a belt of flattened bullets for luck, friends make me mixtapes, and I give them a last-will-and-testament. At the Wisconsin border I realize that I don’t have my passport. “You won’t need it”, Jean-Marie says, and there is no turning back.

Driving sunup to sundown, we make our way to Kansas and winter turns to early spring. One of the mix-tapes is “Rebel Insurgent Journalists on the Road” b/w “Rebel Insurgent Journalists in a Mellow Mood”. We enter Mexico without hassle and the landscape rolls up like a Spaghetti Western. I stick my hand out the window and pull the trigger on the Super-8 movie camera to shoot one frame per mile, which will exhaust its cartridge in the round-trip. This doesn’t happen, however, as the road and our quest progress and diverge.    

Matehuala has a festive glow, with flags and banners suspended above its streets. People walk around selling mirrors, windows, and ladders, like a scene from Orpheus. Today’s cassette is a mix by Timeblind that pulses with Underground Resistance and Basic Channel. In Veracruz we pull over and eat fresh papaya in warm ocean air, and glide past lakes where fisherfolk wearing dye-saturated clothes throw colored nets over the water. By evening we slowly ascend the stretch to mile-high DF, accompanied by the Mexican Philharmonic on the radio, seismically rendering Berlioz. Pollution and altitude sickness have kicked in as we meet J-M’s ex-husband, José, who we’ll stay with. We down a tequila and pass out.

By morning, antibiotics have made me woozy and fever, and I wander the city in search of more Super-8 film. Indiscipline threatens to exhaust the first reel, and photo clerks say that it doesn’t exist, until one does. A crowd is forming in the Zócalo, first a trickle, then a torrent of 15,000 people. It is the anniversary of the uprising and there will be speeches. As the sun sets Cuauthémoc Cardénas, the head of the Party for the Democratic Revolution speechifies. On stage, he’s flanked by female and male Zapatistas, and the masked wrestlers Ecologista and Super Barrio. Respectively they are leaders of democracy, revolution, environmentalism, and the underclass. A woman in a plunge-neck cocktail dress holds a large white dove sign, another one calls for the head of the corrupt former president of Mexico – “Pide la Cabeza de Salinas”. But the protest remains peaceful, if noisy. Land reform, an end to graft, farmer’s rights, and schools are on the agenda.

The next morning, we have an American breakfast at a Mexican Denny’s. President Clinton’s face, who has just bailed out the country, smiles up at us from the place mat from bits of syrup, bacon, and ketchup. At the news stand outside, a tabloid announces the UFO “flap” over the city, with sixteen of them on the front-page.

We hit the Muséo Archéologico, where prismatic frescos detail the racial diversity of the country. Multi-color corn, skulls, and dioramas span the ages, and compete with signs for fruity cocktails. School groups mill around the Mayan/Olmec-Brutalist architecture, but the heirs of the stones are not mired in the past. Catholic School girls interview me about my favorite movie star. I tell them it’s Joe Orvis from the film “The Birth of Joe”, a Punk-pagan-nature-boy to lounge-singer success story. “Perhaps you’ve seen it online?”

Leaving the museum, we are stopped by the police. In an effort to curb pollution, they inform us that our license does not correspond to the numbers that are allowed to drive today, no exceptions. We point at the US plates, plead ignorance, and ask if we could drive back home. We even offer to sweeten the deal, but the car must stay. Since everyone is on their best, if crazy, behavior, I go to the occult market by myself.

Appropriately, Mexico City has Minneapolis’s trams from up to 1954, when a deal was struck to expand the freeways and force people to drive. There is a picture in which a Beuys look-alike in an iridescent coat shakes the hand of the Transit Commissioner while the last streetcar burns behind them. I get in one of these streetcars, then realize that I don’t have change. The driver lets me ride free. The occult market is a sprawl of garlic braids that stream from the ceiling and has a massive itinerary of charms –Buddhas and Grim Reapers suspended in polyurethane pyramids, scorpion paper weights and belts, “have-power-over-enemies” candles, “make-him/her-fall-in-love-with-you” powders, “get-money” oils, “evil-away” incense, health vials, luck cards, and a golden, winged goat head.

As the morning star rises, we set off for Palenque to consult the map and pyramids, and set a course for Chamula. Its valley is full of greenhouses, dyed weavings and two churches, one existent, one a burnt-husk. Lightning struck the one and served as proof that the Christian God was not so powerful as the local ones. Holy statues were salvaged and placed in the remaining church with mirrors around their necks so that worshippers’ spirits would reflect back to them when praying and not be lost to heaven or outer space. Soot and wax from candles run over the stone floors like lava, while pious Mayans kneel and place flowers. The guide book warns not to photograph in the church, as a European tourist had been killed for soul-stealing. Other legends involve a shaman known for his “belch cure” to expel disease and evil spirits; he also had the local Coca-Cola contract. Sitting down for some juice at a café on the town square, children mob us and push clay animals amongst our drinks and insist on damage fees. I take all sixty or so and spell “N-O” which makes them laugh, but not retreat. Then I give one a five-peso bill and point the other children at him for change, which gets him and them running off. Before we leave Chamula, there is a shaman that we need to see for a blessing. His hut is not far from the square, and on its grassy walls hang photos of him with Presidents George Bush and Ronald Regan –he secretly cured them of cancer. We receive his blessing for safe-passage, and pay. Along the road out, cane-harvesters sleep in truck-cab hammocks. We drive nerve-rackingly single lanes against them.

Next we head to the Lacandon jungle, to stay with J-M’s friend and guide Chan-Qui’n quatro. His father, Chan-Qui’n primero, has fourteen sons who are sequentially named after him. As an advocate for his people, the Tzotzil. J-M tells me that he had wandered the streets of New York without a word of English, then spoke to the UN. That night, we sleep in thatched hut hammocks, and I dream I’m in a disco.

In the morning we go down the road to meet the father. Compared to Chan-Qui’n quatro’s manicured yard and huts, Primero’s is a M.A.S.H. base of big military tents, a general store, and rusted, broken pickups traded for oil rights. Chan-Qui’n is in the mess hall/community tent with his four wives and assorted kids. Chan quatro interprets Tzotzil to Spanish, and we are invited to tea. We ask about a guide to take help us bypass military checkpoints, in case they get closed, to get to the Zapatistas. Primero says that he knows of one. Given the compound’s run-down chaos, I can see why Quatro left to learn Spanish, start a guide service, and become a self-reliant spokesman. Those who remain live somewhere between old and new world limbo. Primero is in his 90’s and still making babies who play on a grassed-over airstrip with homemade wooden planes. Quatro makes unfired clay crocodiles, turtles, and jaguars with hollow night-vision eyes for us.

To go even farther back into the consciousness of the land we take a boat on the Usamacinto river to Yatchilan, a Mayan archeological dig. Amidst the soccer fields where skulls were used as balls, we learn that it was ruled by Jaguar King and son. Doctors Without Borders are there with intense political awareness like visitors from another planet. Wearing an Ornette Coleman T-shirt, I walk up a jungle path until I come across two Lacandon children in dirty white smocks, and our hundred-yard stares merge. Leaving the launch, a Coke truck has gone into a ditch, and locals flock to collect bottles.

We spend one more night with Chan Qui’n lV, then go to find our guide in a nearby compound of corrugated huts. Two albino children with jet-black hair and pristine white robes come out, their parents, only slightly larger, follow behind. They are ecstatic to see us, and their heads press into our chests as they give us big hugs. The kids, Pegasus and Chan, are freckled and hyper verbal. Despite my minimal Spanish, I understand that everyone is drunk, and they offer us Palché, a fermented bark wine. Then, a white-haired man in a tortoise shell sweater appears, holding a sack of turtles –our Guide. Peg and Chan show me the grounds and a God House, in which only males are allowed to commune.

Convening with the guide, we strategize routes to the Zaps and set out to try them. January is the rainy season and the roads are muddy, but the Geo has four-wheel drive and seems unstoppable. With one more hill and ditch to go, however, it plateaus on deep muck and we are barely able to push it off. That night, back at the hut, I make a shadow puppet show for the kids, who gasp and laugh as I spin a story of Jesus and the Dinosaurs. All night long there is a terrible scratching on the side of the corrugated walls that evokes horrible visions of what is out there. At dawn, the kids take me to the God Hut, show me its clay figures and shrines, and tell me not to take photos. I sneak one anyway as they explain the conch shells and spirit calls. When we get back to the house, turtle-man has made turtle soup, and I remember that his bag had hung against the wall and that the nocturnal scratching was now lunch. As we prepare to leave, I give Peg and Chan a T-shirt with a cow on it that is as big as their white robes. Their parents apologize for being drunk when we arrived and explain they’d been at a festival. We take the main road to San Cristobal de las Casas and another approach.

San Cristobal, is one of the cities where the uprising occurred and is Chiapas’s former capitol and largest tourist town. A converted monastery, Na Bolóm, is our base, with a few other press and activists. It has also been Diego Rivera’s studio, and in the garden is a statue of him, drunk and embracing a woman on either side –they help him stand. In the morning, the smell of black beans and tortillas mix with Copal incense and fog. They are incredibly delicious. An English journalist reads “The End of Nature” in the courtyard and talks about the uprising in terms of environmental rights. Hand-made fireworks in tightly rolled newspapers pop in bursts, and a wedding down the street booms techno. As the fog burns off, I walk outside to see the bride and groom standing on huge palm fronds.

While we are there, Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a mediator for the Zapatistas, hosts a peace conference. Thousands of natives from Chiapas and beyond gather in celebration and give testimonials in his church. Later, he is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the press-crush that ensues, I manage a photo of a young barefoot Tzotzil woman next to an American flag.

Resigned to reckoning with official channels, we snake up jungle mountains on narrow black highways towards the soldiers. At one point, the fog becomes so thick that we have to open the door and stick a flashlight out to see the shoulder line. The curse of the God House photograph! Endless remote hills sometimes sprout election billboards that are defaced by blood-red paint and pro-Zapatista slogans. At one field, we pass a hand-painted sign that declares the occupants to be an autonomous community squatting on absentee landlord land, and that they do their own policing, so watch out. The first of the military checkpoints comes not long after, and the lips of a young, indigenous soldier move as he reads our papers. This goes on for five more stops until we come to a bunkered encampment roadblock with a Ray-Ban’d, American-looking advisor who puts a stop to our progress. Despite having made this trip many times, J-M has, in her excitement, neglected updated car registration papers. We hear them refer to it as “chocolaté” meaning stolen, then we’re placed under arrest.

The absurdity of the situation is dream-like as an officer accompanies us in the car, which we have to drive to back to Customs in Palenque. He is slight and youngish in a white shirt with insignias, and rides shotgun while I drive. I think that if the trip ends here, I’m going to go all-out. We come to a mountain pass, stop for construction traffic I shoot some film, and he has a smoke. After a few pleasantries in Spanish, I start grilling him on the UFO flap and the who, what, and why of aliens in general. Finally, he admits that his brother-in-law has seen one. We arrive at Customs after business hours and have to spend the night under house arrest in a motel with separate rooms. Around midnight, the heat and anxiety are too much and I ask the desk clerk to let me out for a walk. He says OK. Overhead, the empty streets are crisscrossed with tiny flags, and a black VW Bug sits in front of a funeral parlor. In the morning, Customs almost lets us off the hook because J-M has papers going back six years on the car. We can go, but have only ten days to get out of the country, the countdown typed in triplicate on onion-skin paper. 

Four hours to the barricades, and they let us through this time. The road forward has been blown to hell with more potholes than surface for at least a mile, and we enjoy the true virtues of the 4WD Prism –at 60 mph, it feels like water-skiing. Finally, we arrive at the Liberated City of Guadalupe Tepeyac, named after the EZLN’s “mobile city” in the jungle. Horse-mounted Zapatistas greet us by a cantilevered gate made of trees. They wear the standard bandanas and repurposed seat belts with bullets and toothbrush, and are courteous and relaxed. We are allowed into the main square and told that we will be staying in the abandoned hospital. This had been built as a publicity stunt by the Salinas government, which removed its multi-million-dollar equipment right after the dedication ceremony. Until they vet our credentials, this is our holding cell, and we share it with free-range chickens. We’re cleared at the same time a soft-drink truck arrives, and suddenly women and children appear. Also, in the compound are other journalists and altruists. One is from Sweden with an early digital camera that looks like the Batmobile. Another, who shares my name, is a skater/photographer, researcher/fixer from LA for Oliver Stone and the Beastie Boys. Finally, there is M.S., also from Minneapolis! She is of Irish/Mexican descent and has a weaving collective in San Cristobal that helps women and the Zapatistas. She thinks one way to end the conflict is to have a love-child-savior with Marcos, but remains an outsider.  Suddenly, many cars drive in, a cease-fire has been declared and with it a steady stream of journalists. Our turn comes after dark, but Marcos is elsewhere (in secret negotiations that eventually lead to peace). Instead, we have the pleasure of meeting Major Moises, who is dressed exactly like him, complete with pipe. J-M interviews him while I shoot video and stills. His responses are measured, calm, clear, and eloquently scripted for staying on message from interview to interview. As dogs bark in the background, we are nonetheless satisfied with his agenda and vision of peace and land for the people. Back at the hospital, we discuss waiting for Marcos against our forced departure date, since it’s a four-day drive to the border. Then, we’re told not to leave our confines without accompaniment and it’s lights out.

The next morning, we decide to go. No one comes to ask if we would like coffee or breakfast, so I wander outside to take some background shots. After I return, we eat and get ready to leave when there is a cross-chatter of walkie-talkies about a photographer out-of-bounds in the compound whose film needs to be confiscated. Fortunately, they conflate our names, and we pull out.

The drive north to Palenque is breezy, but there has been tension about J-M’s conservative driving, and she decides to push things. On the narrow foggy two lane up Popocatepetl, she begins passing everything in sight. As we crest the summit, she goes to pass a long-trailered Semi, when another one comes out of the mist. The only way out is to brake and glide under the adjacent truck. Its trailer-stand inches towards my head and slowly spiders the window –miraculously, it doesn’t break. She zips out again into the empty fog and speeds down to the flats, and pulls over with adrenaline shakes, cursing that this is the day the trip insurance expires. Neither of us remarks that Black Magic Woman is playing. Getting into DF late, we take a hotel and I drink tequila and ghost-walk the desolate streets near a black Victor Hugo arch.

The return trip’s calm lasts to the isthmus of Theuantepec, where we stop at a Mission-style motel with Wanted posters wheat-pasted onto it. Then a culture shock to see that the Superbowl is on. Café Tacuba plays half-time for the Latino market broadcast. Flames shoot out behind the singer who is made-up in devil-face and horns. In Oklahoma, the Geo, which has been rock solid, shudders like it is going to explode. We leave it on the roadside and hitch a ride to the nearest dealership. After a look, the manager surmises that no transmission fluid had been added the entire trip, and it is totaled. I am blamed, but was never instructed. As we get to talking about the journey, he lets out that he served in Vietnam, is the great grandson of Jesse James, and would I like to step out back to play Russian Roulette. I tell him that I’d had enough for the time being. With no Greyhound Station near, we flag down a pickup and, for forty bucks, ride in the back to Oklahoma City. Six months later, its Federal building is bombed and Timothy McVeigh is arrested near the dealership. 

–Sean Smuda

Hi-8 Video, 15’, 1995

PolyglotYrCrack? is based on an automatic writing interpreted as a series of exchange rituals that include money, sex, and work, and are mediated by speaking in tongues.

Super-8 Transfer, Hi-8 Video
15’, 1994

Super-8 film, Hi-8 Video, 1995, 20’
The Furthur Raves started when Drop Bass Network brought Aphex Twin to a farmfield in Wisconsin

HD Video
1’37”, 2022

2.24.22
mixed media
110 x 32 x 20 cm
2022

2.24.22 (detail)
mixed media
110 x 32 x 20 cm
2022

2.24.22 (detail)
mixed media
110 x 32 x 20 cm
2022

Sephiroth
60 x 61 x 16 cm
mixed media
2022

Sephiroth (detail)
60 x 61 x 16 cm
mixed media
2022

MAN Turm
268 x 50 x30 cm
mixed media
2021 - 2022

MAN Turm (detail)
268 x 50 x30 cm
mixed media
2021 - 2022

MAN Turm (detail)
268 x 50 x30 cm
mixed media
2021 - 2022

MAN Turm (detail)
268 x 50 x30 cm
mixed media
2021 - 2022

MAN Turm (detail)
268 x 50 x30 cm
mixed media
2021 - 2022

DEATH OF THE ROCKER, Purple Haze Mix
(w/1’ audio)
65 x 65 x 17 cm
2021

Stange
160 x 40 x 18
mixed media
2022

Ziegenbeine
40 x 30 x 7 cm
2020

Forest
silver gelatin print, 1995

Industrial is automatic writings that determines the story as it falls. Set in vast labyrinths and grounded renewal, the body finds its parallel in warm resistance and ingrained instructions.

Descent

silver gelatin print, 1997

Whirlpool

silver gelatin print, 1996

Spiral

silver gelatin print, 1997

Tunnel

silver gelatin print, 1997

Wing

silver gelatin print, 1997

May Day

silver gelatin print, 1997

Vortex

silver gelatin print, 1995

Gutz

silver gelatin print, 1997

Snake

silver gelatin print, 1997

Floor

silver gelatin print, 1996

Pyre

silver gelatin print, 1995

Time

silver gelatin print, 1997

Factory

silver gelatin print, 1995

Larynx

silver gelatin print, 1997

Brain

silver gelatin print, 1997

Chest

silver gelatin print, 1997

Crown

silver gelatin print, 1997

Sex

silver gelatin print, 1997

Capitol

silver gelatin print, 1997

Government

silver gelatin print, 1997

Body

sepia-toned silver gelatin prints, 1998

Path

silver gelatin print, 1998

archival pigment print, 2004

Dreams and Allegories are made with a 4x5 camera on film. Like dreams they are arrangements between the symbolic and social orders and implicate the viewer as part of their narrative.

archival pigment print, 2004

archival pigment print, 2004

archival pigment print, 2004

archival pigment print, 2004

archival pigment print, 2004

archival pigment print, 2004

archival pigment print, 2006

archival pigment print, 2006

archival pigment print, 2006

archival pigment print, 2007

Camille LeFevre Decoding-Dreams and Allegories