Two Statuary Studies
Two HD Videos, 4:31 and 5:20 TRT, 2008.
Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Library commissioned us in 2007 to produce a new work in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The Rosenbach’s online exhibition Twenty-First Century Abe, with two videos we are calling “Two Statuary Studies,” shot in the neighboring cities of San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.
The videos document performances at these monuments by eccentric, para-historians of our culture: a magician-mentalist and a historical re-enactor (called a Lincoln “presenter”). Nemonico and William Peck “used” the monuments, each in a different way, to offer us perspectives on the actual and imaginary relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juarez, presidents of their countries who never met, but are often compared.