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Jim Dessicino: I modeled the sculpture off the original Laura Poitras video. I started making the sculpture last September, and I did the head first in clay. I made that in about three weeks. Her video was the only thing [with his face in it], really. I watched it over and over again, and paused it to make stills.You didn't use any computer modeling?
No, absolutely not. It was just by looking at it. I went to school at [Philadelphia's] University of the Arts and had two great sculpture teachers. I learned how to just look at people, and recreate them sculpturally.When you were making his face, in particular, did you try to add any expression to it?
Yeah, I wanted an expression of him being a little unaware, or a little unsure. This is how I felt about what happened. It's hard to talk about it now, since so much has changed. Snowden has become this very pivotal figure in the issue of surveillance. It's the big information-age issue, and the issue of my generation. He and I are only a year apart in age. I was just happy that there was someone in my generation-which is always labeled as self-serving and full of themselves-who would sacrifice all his liberties to try and give us information.
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I wouldn't say that making a statue of someone makes them an idol. I'm trying to be critical of the whole concept of monumentality. It's about discourse and a distance between you and what's made. This can be a democratic activity that can make people pause, bring them together, and discuss things happening right now, in a public space. I thought it was important to try and take something slow and old and traditional that expresses clearly what I'm trying to say and what society could represent through sculptures, a very slow and permanent medium in a world of crazy-fast technological information. I just wanted to give people a chance to slow down and think about the fastest, most invasive, all-encompassing subject of privacy, technology, and surveillance. And here's the oldest of art forms questioning the guy who's the questioner.
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I have to take it to the Delaware Center of Contemporary Art, where it will be in a show for the next three months. I've been getting a lot of offers from people in the South and Midwest who want to put him in public parks.
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A little bit, yeah! We had someone from the park security partnership come by, and they were so happy. They took the postcards I was giving out, and said we love this, we love Snowden. Then a cop came by and he was really happy, and he took a festival brochure and a postcard. Then this guy from the park service came by ,and said he really liked sculpture and took a postcard-but he said that unless we had a permit, we had to leave to go or he'd get in trouble with his boss. So I called the festival, and they didn't have a permit. I was more than willing to leave because I didn't want to cause this guy any trouble. I said, "Don't give me a ticket, and I won't give you any trouble."Why'd you put the Snowden sculpture specifically next to Abe Lincoln in Union Square?
It's an American conversation, a conversation about liberty. Lincoln knew a lot about liberty. Here you have this young guy, Snowden, talking about civil liberties in a different way and different age, but the conversation is an American conversation-and it's an old one, as well as an ongoing one. I'm sure people walk by and ignore that Abe Lincoln sculpture all day long. Or they think of Lincoln in a mythological way-as the preserver of the Union and the freer of slaves. By putting the Edward Snowden sculpture there, it hooks Lincoln back up into time and creates a direct link from the past to the present.
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That general sense of apathy-of being disengaged with public life-is something very typical of our time. People aren't concerned with someone like Snowden-a crusader for civil liberties. It's none of their concern.Why don't you think Snowden is a household name?
He is not a household name because he does not have a TV show. To be a household name in the internet age, you need to be in the news constantly and be entertaining. Edward Snowden is like history class-informative, insightful, and important-but he reveals uncomfortable truths that some do not want to hear. He is not entertaining.
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