About a month into President Donald Trump’s current term, certain words started to disappear from government websites. The Department of Energy scrubbed “climate change,” “green” and “decarbonization” from its pages. The National Cancer Institute was directed to flag all mentions of “fluoride” and “peanut allergies.”
Hundreds of words were eliminated or flagged in everything from research proposals to job descriptions — the Federal Aviation Administration could no longer offer roles as part of “a diverse workforce,” instead they offered the chance to be part of “a workforce.”
Boulder-based artist and professor Yumi Roth watched in bewilderment as the words piled up.
“I just kept hearing more terms, it seemed like a pretty inordinate list,” she said. “And I felt kind of powerless.”
Roth started to wonder: “How can I reverse this? What is the destruction of the destruction of words?” she said. Then she went to Amazon and bought a paper shredder.
With the help of Todd Herman, founder of the East Window Gallery in Boulder, Roth set up a small office space with the shredder on one side and a stack of 1,462 sheets of paper — one for each day of a four-year presidential term — printed with the flagged and banned words. Every few days she heads to her tiny makeshift office and shreds a sheet of paper.
“Effigy 1462” is, for the most part, a private project. Running an ongoing exhibit in a private space for four years straight requires a certain amount of flexibility, so there are no set open studio hours, and the location isn’t published publicly.
The makeshift office space where artist Yumi Roth’s “Effigy 1462” work takes place, with one sheet of paper shredded for every day of President Trump’s four-year term. (Photo provided by Yumi Roth)
But this weekend Herman and Roth will open the space to viewers as part of a nationwide demonstration called “Fall of Freedom,” a loosely guided series of artist-led protests that “celebrate the experiences, cultures and identities that shape the fabric of our nation,” according to the group’s mission statement.
Fourteen Colorado organizations plan to take part in the demonstration, offering free screen printing workshops, exhibition viewings, movie screenings, monologues, drag shows, theater performances and live music.
Elsewhere, organizations are hosting banned book read-alongs and banned-word singalongs. An artist space in Los Angeles is hosting a “Labubus Against Fascism!” party. An Edinburgh, U.K.-based artist is setting up the United States Apologies Desk, or USAD, in front of the former U.S. Embassy in London, offering formal apologies to passersby from behind a small desk adorned with a flag with the word “sorry.”
“I think a lot of people, not just artists, are a little bit unsure about what the move is for this particular political moment,” said Brandy Coons, programs and galleries director at the Art Gym Denver. “This event gave us a very clear opportunity to gather people together and put some energy into figuring out how we as artists can be effectively politically engaged.”
The Art Gym will offer a handful of designs to print, sourced from member artists and printmakers from the BRDG Project and Boulder Printmakers Group. Participants can bring their own materials to print on, like T-shirts or tote bags, or pick up a card stock poster onsite.
A refresher on constitutional rights
In Carbondale, people can show up to The Project Shop on Saturday for free screen prints of “red card rights,” selections from the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution that protect citizens and noncitizens from unlawful searches, seizures or detainment.
“We were thinking about the founding of our country and those initial ideas from the Constitution,” said Reina Katzenberger, director at The Project Shop. “Why were those ideas so powerful, why are they still so powerful, and why do they continually have to be defended?”
Print making is a natural medium for the demonstration, Katzenberger said. It’s not just about the personal experience of creating something, but about spreading that message widely.
The Project Shop’s Saturday demonstration is also an open call for anyone who wants to offer their own creative response. One group will lead continuous recitations of the Constitution; a local class of students, learning about the Declaration of Independence in school, offered to read the declaration as their contribution.
“It’s a chance for us to come together and celebrate how incredible our communities are,” she said. “And having that be nationwide means being part of something bigger than ourselves, which is so American.”
The quiet movement
It’s been a few days since Roth has visited her shredder. She’s letting the pages accumulate so that there’s something to see Saturday.
“It’s a totally repetitive process. Not many ways you can make it exciting,” she said.
That’s part of the point.
The word list has grown longer since Roth printed her 1,462 pages. The executive orders haven’t stopped rolling in. Every once in a while she pairs an image from a day of paper shredding with an event in politics and publishes it to the East Gallery website.
Day 215: “Trump states that he will review all 21 Smithsonian museums to enforce alignment with the administration’s mission”
Day 233: “U.S. Supreme Court overrules federal judge, allows racial profiling by ICE in Los Angeles”
Day 274: “Trump starts demolition on East Wing of the White House”
“There’s always a fear that in the relentlessness you become numbed,” Roth said. Attending to her paper shredding keeps her tuned in to subtle shifts over time. She’s noticed the way the pedestal has begun to sag under the sustained weight of the paper, the slowly shrinking stack, the swelling pile of shreds.
“It’s like watching sand in an hourglass,” she said. “If you stare right at it, you’d think it’s barely moving. But eventually it does all move.”