Shibboleth (1980)
(Color / 13:26 min)

This video is of a performance that I did at Video Free America. It starts out with my playing a voice recording my brother made as part of a speech therapy class in 1955 when he was 7 years old. When the record was finished playing a pre-recorded video tape was shown of a dialogue between two people, one of whom was asking for help in getting rid of his New York accent. The dialogue started in a very calm and impersonal manner and degenerated into personal criticism. Following this I placed different international foods in to a blender and mixed them. I poured this mixture through a series of filter cones marked with a line of longitude, staring at 30 degrees east and going to 120 degrees west of the Greenwich meridian.

As the liquid filtered through the cones I tasted it at 75 degrees and said "There is purity to this. The blend is finally a solution".