Seventeen Grand Narratives for a new Grand Canyon was edited from footage shot over a three week period in early 2003 at the location the media has embedded into everyone's mind as 'Ground Zero', that being lower Manhattan at the World Trade Center site. While wishing to avoid making a work explicitly referencing the 9/11 tragedy it was interesting to witness the peculiar tourist activities at my front door. One such activity was the obsession with filming 'what wasn't there'- the empty air where the towers stood. It seemed that people from around the globe were busy creating their own 'grand narratives', even as the bureaucratic powers that be continue to haggle over, with no end in site, the final outcome of this man-made crater.

Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drums beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60's soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a 'B' side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that 'information wants to be free'- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.