December 2002

Having moved into the flat of a recently deceased gentleman, for a period of time we were still receiving mail in his name. It was mostly government paperwork, Social Security statements, and other highly confidential yet equally impersonal data collection. Observing all these inhuman remnants, I wondered what it would be like if instead of documenting financial credits and debits, an organization jotted down people’s idiosyncrasies. Those glimmers of personality and memory, all that which makes us unique, an identity divergent from the simple fact that one has $82.19 left over in a checking account. Thus, later, as a part of the William Ryan installations, a fictional government entity entitled the Ministry of Observations was created. A entity which tracks all of those lost moments, habits, decisions and preferences that makes all of us uniquely us.

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