MANIFESTO
Always subject to change; yet the bones remain the same .
First, an introduction on why I am this way.
“On the Topic of Existential Maximalism: [A paper that was for my MFA but Encapsulates who I am as an Artist from a Conceptual Ground, and that Ground is Made of Dirt] ->
I. A Zipcode for the Dead and Timeless Beings
My grandfather was a tough man. He was a creature of tactile reality; he had large, calloused hands, drank scotch with a steady grip, and was one of nine children raised in the crucible of mid-century grit. He went by Bob, never Robert; he had no time for the decorative flourishes of extra syllables. In our family, identity was something he assigned rather than something you discovered. He had nicknames for everyone: every girl was "Peanut," and every boy was something macho, like "Sluggo," or, if the situation warranted it, "Idiot."
He married a lovely woman named Judy Maisel when they were just twenty years old. Their life was anchored by a church named after Petronilla, the alleged child of Saint Peter. The history of that church is a ghost story of urban planning: the building sits on the exact plot of land where Bob’s childhood home once stood. To build the place of worship, his house had to be physically uprooted and moved across the street.
I think of my grandfather often, not just because of the bloodline, but because of the way he subverted his own rules for me. He never gave me a nickname. He always called me William (never Will, never Sluggo). In the middle of our family’s chaotic, high-decibel day-to-day, he would engage me in conversations that felt like we were exiting the timeline. We existed in a state of radical presentness.
Because of the religious focus of my upbringing or something like this? In my family, the other realm is treated like a neighboring zip code. We talk about the dead as if they are merely in the other room. Aunt Mary is spoken of as being 105 years old, even though her physical body stopped at 96. This fluidity of time informs everything I do.
When I’m back “home,” I often find myself standing on that pavement, trying to visualize the void that was once here before us. I think about what it looked like when nothing was there: just a stretch of land, unaware that it would eventually be transformed into the spiritual and educational epicenter for Bob, my mother, her siblings, and eventually, myself. A space where for generations, countless members of my family both attended school, church, and participated in traditions of religion, suburban life, and lineage that informed and conflicted with my own way of being. This layering of space (where a bedroom becomes an altar, and a kitchen becomes a classroom) is perhaps where my obsession with "space-making" truly began.
I think of my grandfather often, not just because of the bloodline, but because of the way he subverted his own rules for me. He never gave me a nickname. He always called me William (never Will, never Sluggo). In the middle of our family’s chaotic, high-decibel day-to-day, he would engage me in conversations that felt like we were exiting the timeline. We existed in a state of radical presentness.
There is an interesting quagmire here. I am tasked with [determining how my work/praxis/portfolio situates itself] yet I am reflecting on a man (and in many ways, memories and moments themselves) who no longer exists in the physical realm. However, as I look up at the cyanotyped, circular emblem I created for my second critique, his face staring back at me through a flurry of fabric and chemicals, I realize that my grandfather is not a distraction from my work.
II. The Lexicon of the Archive: Existential Maximalism
My practice has become a behemoth of living objects, animated installations, and "living photographs." Whether I am documenting hookup anecdotes or performing as a psychotic, abject twin-drag-alter ego, the threads all lead back to the same space: my grandmother’s basement, filled with a smorgasbord of film slides and photo boxes that rest like everlasting lungs, breathing in the damp suburban air. In this, I aiming to and attempting to capture the immensity of overlapped realms of place and identity: the image I recall transcends into the objects I find; the objects I find become representations of that moment, compiling into elements of the larger installation; the installation itself is an image in four dimensions, to be experienced by and through the viewers, the audience.
I propose to bring together the theories and methods I’m working with in a philosophy I’m calling “Existential Maximalism,” a term I coined to describe the state I have inhabited since childhood.
The Definition: Existential Maximalism is an artistic praxis concerned with the experience of the multiplicity of identity across varied states, places, and times. It asserts that through the assemblage and accumulation of objects, spaces, and performances, it is possible to archive the multiplicity of an identity in motion.
This approach transcends traditional photography. It is a multidisciplinary investigation of how artistic practice can express the infinite nature of identity through fabricated narratives. It is a philosophy for pushing beyond the finitude of earthly life by "maximalizing" the vitality we lend to the objects that define us. Whether I am overtaking the crawlspace under the stairs in my childhood home or scavenging loose objects from the streets of Detroit and Ypsilanti, I am performing an archival process for the "aftermath."
To understand this year’s output, one must understand the lexicon I am building:
• Existential: The basic, terrifying, and beautiful f(act) of being alive.
• Maximalism: An aesthetic of excess. Not just more, but a curated abundance that necessitates immersive viewing. It is a direct action to secure the whole of a program.
• Queering: Disrupting the expected. It is the act of revealing new possibilities within power structures and spaces that were never meant for us.
• Installation: A large-scale method of image-making where the viewer is no longer an observer, but a resident.
• Fabulation: The art of the tall tale. Filling in the blanks of memory with something better, or truer, than the facts.
• Multiplicity: The state of being many things at once; various, layered, and shifting.
• Time: A semi-incorrectly measured continuum. I view time not as a line, but as a room we are constantly rearranging. A badly drawn, chalk-board circle.
III. The Year in Review: Four Critiques or Shows or Performances
The past year has been an aggressive evolution of this praxis, manifested in four distinct bodies of work:
Critique 1: Homosemiocryptics This was a collection of twelve abstracted agreements. I took the behaviors and "unspoken rules" positioned across queer sex-spaces and transformed them into semiotic devices. These were then further abstracted into multi-image exposure lightboxes. The work was an attempt to make the "unsaid" concrete, examining how much of our identity we reveal or conceal in so-called "liberated" spaces.
Critique 2: Moses II Marketplace This was a wall-based, breathing archive. I combined a stranger’s discarded photo album, an archive of a former lover’s objects, and my own maternal family’s photo boxes. It asked a difficult question: Where is the line between commodifying a life and honoring it? The result was a circular narrative; a marketplace of memories where nothing was for sale, but everything was on display.
Critique 3: The Abject Mölly (Mölly’s Room) Here, the work turned inward and became visceral. Mölly is my twin, my alter-ego, the drag persona I joke was "absorbed in the womb." This was a room-based activation, a release of that twin into the physical world. Trapped for 23 years, she emerged in a space saturated in "Berry Pink," embodying the abject sentiments of a fractured psyche.
Critique 4: The Abject Mölly (Mölly’s Duplex) The final evolution was a dual-room installation contemplating the "non-place" between reality and fantasy. It was a "growing house" that used image-making to fight against the slippage of time and the literal fading of photographs. It invited the viewer to look for what was missing: to see the ghost in the room.
IV. Between Four Church Pillars and Two Backrooms
As I look toward my thesis, my research continues to interrogate four pillars:
1. Queer Semiotics: How signs and logos influence our identity in the digital and physical "darkroom."
2. The Breathing Archive: Treating memory not as a dusty box, but as a living organism that requires queering to survive.
3. Twinning: Maintaining a multiplicity of self; the artist as a crowd.
4. The Public/Private Crossing: Investigating the point where the artist’s private grief becomes public spectacle.
My future plans involve an international residency in Berlin, Germany, where I will investigate "club death" and the shrinkage of queer spaces, comparing the ruins of Berlin’s nightlife to the resilient pockets of the American Midwest, while also developing and writing more about my methodology and philosophy.
My thesis ideas are brewing: a deep-dive into my 65-year-old father’s post-closet life as he grapples with his past, and a continuation of the "Möllyhouse,” an investigation into room-based installations that serve as psychological sanctuaries.
V. My Head & My Potatoes & The Kitchen Sink
I hope to continue existing in this state of synchronicity. I often think of my work as the act of dipping a potato in white paint; an absurd, surrealist performance of preservation. It is an act of planning for a future that hasn't arrived while honoring a past that won't leave.
My grandfather comes to me in many forms now: a pair of rabbits outside Green Road, a sharp wink from a stranger on the bus, a harsh handshake in a dream, or a plank of wood left on a sidewalk in the exact dimensions I need for a frame. I miss him, but I am not stuck. I am writing this letter to my "past" lives while pinning post-it notes to my future.
I am making space to wear the beret, the cowboy hat, and the ushanka all at once. My head is large enough to carry them, and my praxis demands nothing less.
I remember one specific moment of this radical presentness with Bob. I was seven or eight years old, visiting him in Florida. A storm was rolling in, the kind of heavy, bruising tropical front that makes the air feel electric. While everyone else sought cover, he took me out to the beach. He stood there, stoic and silent, watching the horizon line vanish into a wall of gray.
"Watch for the signs, William," he said. He pointed out the darkening clouds, the sudden drop in temperature that felt like a cold hand on the neck, and the abruptness of the wind against your ear. We stood there for only a few minutes, but in my memory, it occupied the whole day. That stillness amidst the impending chaos is what I held onto as I held his hand during his final moments. It is what I feel now, writing this, with my back pressed against his old leather jacket, a relic I claimed in the frantic, blurred aftermath of his funeral and this same similarity is what I seek in my work in the coming year.
“I think you have ADHD” -Charlotte Watson
A note from Charlotte, that feels relevant, but a good transition to the MANIFESTO, of sorts:
To survive is to disconnect
To exist is to create;
I call inward to my many selves, varied existences and fragmented souls,
To wake in me the strength and discipline to float across the many states,
Of radical creation, steadfast trust, and endless love.
In choosing this life that operates through maximal performance, memory, and space-making,
My work calls back and a call forward, expressing varied selves both in yesterday and tomorrow,
Existing via many, varied pieces presently through rapid motion.
Hold trust in the double idea; that you hold both fact and fiction.
Doubt not that abundance is within the practice, the spirit, the mission
And to any fear that creeps into this multiplex
Relinquish its power for opposing it lies a curated curiosity
On whom you were, who you are, and who are you becoming;
At the crossway within this timeless existence.
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This life is a maximal image; rotating in varied dimensions
Therein this life exists no medium, no manual, no mundane.
In this life, there exists a mirror, that flips between the inward and the outward.
If one desires to life this life maximally, one must be in a state of radical creativity.
Every gesture an act, every motion a mark makes.
In living this life lies commitment, concern, and cooperation with the dark self,
It requires consistent and everlasting committing to learning, to failing, to trying.
It conquers fear at every step, it builds legacy with every move and leaves a mark in ever vessel it exercises itself at.
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As the practice continues to morph, grow, and mature,
The artist acknowledges that it too is a vessel of creation;
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Subsiding then the seriousness of this promise,
The art and artist become one in this practice,
Exercising the fact that to live in the maximum,
Total synchronicity with the universe, the art, and the artist is established.
So, to bask in this light of all the dimensional haze,
The maker and its maquette both are grounded in total foundation,
In an endless marriage built to open the minds of the audience in every process.
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William r Höhe
- William: “resolute protector” or “strong-willed warrior”
- r: symbolizes creativity, movement, and specific technical concepts depending on the context. In graphology, it signifies creative expression.
- Höhe: Height or altitude
Creative, tall*, strong-willed warrior
*I have a lot of really tall shoes, and people tend to think of me as a tall person, even though I’m only 5’9” but I guess height is artificial.