Stand ByYour Guns
Stand By Your Guns confronts us with the ubiquity of guns and how violent simulations translate into real life shootings. It is an absurdist piece that both glorifies the weapon and masquerades as an entertainment arcade.
Stand By your Guns glorifies the handgun and masquerades as a children's fun centre, using language from NRA literature encouraging viewers to amass, understand, and enjoy guns. Visitors can watch gun-TV, play games, visit Charlton Heston via webcam in his rest home (when available), colour pictures of guns, and print out their own slogans onto iron-on fabric for t-shirts. Recorded soundtracks such as laugh tracks, gunshots, and applause pepper the experience, and increase the macabre absurdity.
This was a 2004 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for its Turbulence web site. This project was made possible by a grant from the Jerome Foundation.