I Can Burn Your Face
Wall-mounted title piece and 18 Burning Spies, installed on the floor. 7mm Neon, transformers and wires, 2008. This installation was permanently altered in 2009 to reflect confiscations by the Dutch secret service, AIVD.'To burn a face' is the phrase used within the AIVD meaning to expose a source's identity. I wrote descriptions of each agent I interviewed in my notebooks —18 in total—and then used these descriptions to 'burn' them. The neon words are lifted directly from my notebooks, and are in my handwriting.
Installation at Stroom, 2008.
Detail, Vincent II. 2008.
I Can Burn Your Face, as of 2009
At Yvon Lambert Paris (2009), the installation I Can Burn Your Face was permanantly altered from its original form to reflect the confiscation by the secret service of 7 prints from the series The 18 Spies . The current installation highlights the legal and ethical issues of presenting work focused on an organization mired in secrecy. The 18 Spies includes eighteen letterpress prints that describe the eighteen agents with whom I met during my commission. These prints are essentially maps or plans for their neon counterparts in I Can Burn Your Face. Due to the AIVD's confiscation of the prints, the corresponding 7 neon spies have been permanently turned off.
Installation view, Yvon Lambert Paris, 2009. Three spies are on; three are turned off.
Installation view, Yvon Lambert Paris, 2009.
Installation view, Yvon Lambert Paris, 2009. The 18 Spies
are hung along the wall. The seven which were confiscated are replaced now with blank sheets of paper.
Installation view, Yvon Lambert Paris, 2009. Detail of Miranda III.
You have so much information already.What do I have?
I'll tell you what you don't have. You don't have our names or our methods. But you do have something dangerous: you have our faces. You are the only person I know who can identify such a number of us— and you are not even in The Organization, nor are you Dutch.