DEMOCRACY: THE LAST CAMPAIGN

A National year long multi-media project focusing on the 2000 elections includes website, publications, public forums and exhibitions Produced by Margaret Crane and Jon Winet videographer and editor Chris Borkowski.

"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?" -Abraham Lincoln

Democracy: The Last Campaign is a national, year-long project produced in conjunction with the 2000 elections. For the fifth consecutive presidential election cycle, the artist collaborative of Margaret Crane & Jon Winet from San Francisco, California, are exploring and participating in the spectacle and phenomenon of the national presidential election process. These quadrennial exercises in political theater are seen as extraordinary inspiration and sources for the creation of work and dynamic opportunities for public dialogue.

Democracy will include on-line and ("real life")public forums, publications, and exhibitions. The work is conceived as both a national and a local project. For the Buffalo component, Crane & Winet have researched and produced work that addresses issues and concerns specific to Buffalo and New York. Simultaneously, as in their 1996 project Conventional Wisdom, they are collaborating with a number of artists and writers in an open Internet-based salon, functioning as both a forum for a national discussion of the issues and as a dynamic virtual space for the display of work.

For their Hallwalls Artist in Residence Project (HARP), Crane & Winet produced digital photographic, audio, and video pieces which capture the political zeitgeist of the moment. These pieces will be integrated into an exhibition at Hallwalls and be included in a dynamic website, and in a culminating interactive screen-based multi-media CD-ROM. Democracy borrows from the visual aesthetics and graphic design of twentieth-century newspapers, network television, video games, and avant-garde installation. The content plays off theses familiar visual elements with unexpected combinations of photography, graphics, sound, and video to produce startling reporting, commentary, fiction, and manifestos.