Sleeping with Jefferson
Installation: Waterbed frame, Digital Picture Frame, Hubcaps/ Wheel Cover, Video Projection, Audio. 2008
Sleeping with Jefferson is an installation based on a futuristic hypothetical forecast of Native American blood quantum in the Phoenix Metro Area. The installation incorporates water bed covered in square hubcaps / wheel covers. Above, a video projector projects abstract imagery of mixed-raced couples together in bed. The highly pixilated projection of mixed race couples and moving water creates a colorful arrangement of lights. Additionally a digital picture frame sits in the headboard, displaying a map of metro Phoenix, the 5th largest metropolitan area in the US. Using my family’s history (data) my collaborator, Anubhav Bagley a City Planner and regional Analyst at MAG helped me forecast the probabilities of future generations of the Native American population the Phoenix metro area using geographic information system (GIS) linking the results to spatial information on a changing map. Magenta colored dots change to green and blue dots indicated the change of Native Americans who will all but disappear by 2200.
According to the 2000 Census, less than one percent of the United States population is Native American, defined as one race, and the part-indigenous community account for half percent. When combined, these percentages total to just over 4 million people, a small amount when compared to the 282 million total US population. In addition, less than 900,000 of US Native Americans live on Indian Reservations. The rest live in cities and suburbs
Context
With the westward expansion came new challenges to define and divide territory. Thomas Jefferson suggested a grid system based on the rectangle. The Land Ordinance of 1785 drafted by Thomas Jefferson, extended government authority over the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes regions. The grid divided vast geographic spaces into one-mile square plots of land. The Jeffersonian grid represents a quantitative method for land expansion and geographic space, and is apparent in cities like Metro-Phoenix and Las Vegas.
