Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally acclaimed for her large-scale multimedia installations, public projects, and performance collaborations. Her site-responsive process works with common materials to invoke particular places, collective voices, and communities of labor.
An address to the Nation
August 9 2020
Ann Hamilton with Ameneh Chan, Ashby Edmunds-Warby, Enzio Purewal, Felix Bahrou, Isabel Metz, Kip Rodes, Matteo Ornelas, Malachi Edmunds-Warby, Nora Rodes, Sabine Bahrou, Solvi Updyke, and Sidney Griffin
I.
Good evening MY FRIENDS
Tonight the sun sets as it does every night
But our future morning is uncertain
This nation has suffered enormous LOSS
A loss of people
A loss Of Faith in each other
A loss Of Trust in our Civic institutions. We have become divided from each other And this division causes great Pain.
The issues that face us are not simple Few problems have only one cause But this loss of trust challenges the very core of our nation.
HOW do we renew our faith in each other, in our institutions and in the possibility of our Constitutional democracy?
II.
I know I have the body of a child But I have the heart of a president
And I wear the cloth of the nation.
A piece of woven cloth is a democratic object Each thread must do its part for the strength of the cloth to hold each thread must work with all the other threads if it is to cushion a body’s weight keep a body warm , shelter and protect a body from the sun and the rain But this cloth of our nation is threadbare.
Some strands
have grown thick and bloated, they pull and distort. others have become thin and given way Some are slack, unhoused, apart.
When we cede support of the most powerful thread
Over support of the weaker one
The cloth warps When pain and prosperity are not equally shared Our cloth cannot ease the pull of an arm’s reach grace the swing of a step sustain many wearings. Without each thread crossing with its neighbor
In a graceful dance,
Our cloth will not hold.
It is a form constantly in motion –
And like the possibility of our
Democracy
Will never be complete
Will always be forming
Is always being made and remade,
Stitched and unstitched, In a weaving into concordance The individual desires and rights which must serve the common good for the cloth to hold.
Let the cloth we make
be a cloth of Service.
by our actions
let us shape
our 18th century constitution with a 21st century loom.
For a wise man once said
Man did not weave the web of life,
he is merely a strand in it
whatever he does to the web he does also to himself
III.
So let us go then, you and I,
back to the loom and cover our nakedness
by weaving anew
time past
and time present.
Somewhere
I read that
history may be servitude,
history may be freedom.
Somewhere I read
that Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere.
Somewhere I read
that we have a rendezvous with destiny.
And we have one single garment of destiny
which ties together
all our nation’s rich promises.
It promises that everyone
has healthy food grown in fertile soils.
It promises that everyone
can have an affordable place called home.
It promises
free education for the mind
and medicine for the body.
It promises meaningful work and a fair wage.
STRENGTH in each of these
When woven together
Will mend the cloth of this nation
Will be
Strength for All.
Begin with your neighbor
Begin with a stranger
Tie your thread to theirs
You are each other’s only hope
Your extended hand
is
an opportunity
for reciprocity
Do not withdraw it in fear.
The definition of liberty is yours to make
Is a responsibility
for you to take
And this is the time
for getting to work
Thank you my friends for your service.
Guide your individual thread with care
For the cloth does not belong to us
We belong to the cloth
We are tied in a single garment of destiny
The light may dim as I speak these words,
But
as the day breaks,
Let the cloth we make
shine
in the new morning light
And from this cloth
Let us make
a blanket
to bear and birth
a future for all