“My piece started with a violently slashed book, “Homosexuality: Opposing Viewpoints,” probably directed toward a high school audience.
What I like about the book is that while clearly sympathetic to homosexuality, it dares to expose readers to contrasting viewpoints. Offering essays that form a series of arguments,
it implicitly trusts that informed readers can make intelligent choices. The idea of open argument reminded me of the ways opposing viewpoints are not encouraged in our society.
Religion, politics and even (most sadly) education too often encourage a monolithic ideology that acts threatened by debate. In this climate, it is no wonder that a few individuals
like John Perkyns, the SFPL vandal, take the extreme action of physically destroying what they perceive as threatening to their worldview. I am reminded of other instances – the
1933 burning of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science library by the Nazi’s, and the more recent book burning by Serb nationalists at the Bosnian National University Library.
With this train of thought, I began to imagine what physical form an argument might take. Volumes from an old Encyclopedia set became actors in my visual argument. A set of lenses allows
you to look through the pulp of the altered books to an upside down view.”
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