As we head toward the 2016 Presidential Election, new questions rise about which citizens will be empowered and who will be left behind. The name of this project focuses on those whose futures are most precarious as we head into a new political realm. The project asks participants directly, ‘in your everyday life, as we head toward the 2016 elections, whose political story needs broadcasting?’

Participants responded to this question with direct and indirect text, images, graphics, and mark-making as contributions to this temporary monument. The inflatable is a tactic I learned at Montalvo, and is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. Its scale is significant and can broadcast its contents from a significant distance to beckon closer readings, it’s temporary and can be re-mounted multiple times in locations that are either sanctioned or not (as is necessary sometimes with political advocacy), it’s mobile, it’s unfamiliar to enter into (rather than typical inflatables that are sealed off and anthropomorphic), and it creates a compelling inner/outer dichotomy–we enter the inflatable to see the responses in a space that is nearly private, and outside of the inflatable monument as we approach, we see the verso of all the responses (generating more complex readings of the collective response)… JL 2016

A big thank you to Noelle Mason and Will Douglas for support with the design and assembly of the inflatable.