Brooklyn-based artist and activist Grayson Earle talks about:
His unplanned landing in Brooklyn, where he couch-surfed into a commune-style house, and where he's remained since moving to NY from California in 2010; his fluid relationship with the identity of "artist," ultimately one he embraces because it affords him more opportunities that if he took on the identity of "activist;" his experiences with artist collection The Illuminator, including getting arrested while projecting provocative phrases challenging donor Charles Koch onto The Metropolitan Museum; his admiration for open source programmers, and the process of sharing software and information, and the choice, in his words, of being an artist who either influences culture or makes saleable art objects; his experience being onsite at the start of Occupy Wall Street, and his role procuring food for that first generation occupiers (including vegan pizza); interacting with the problem of where our tax payments go through his project Tax Deductible Expenses, which features Earle eating and/or drinking in a series of YouTube videos, with the receipt for his goods posted alongside; and his Illuminator projection of a holographic bust of Edward Snowden, in place where an anonymously placed actual bust was placed in Fort Greene Park, in turn making it an odd completion of the original piece (they wound up meeting the pair behind the bust of Snowden, which is now available as a file for 3D printing).