The Truth Is Out There

Robert Boyd, 09.06.09
Posted by: Jim Radosta
It’s a good thing Robert Boyd isn’t a member of the Obama administration, or he’d probably be out of a job.
Conspiracy Theory–the interdisciplinary artist’s two-channel video installation on display through Oct. 24 at Pacific Northwest College of Art–dips its toes in the boiling subject of whether 9/11 was an inside job. The rapidly edited images, set incongruously to a vapid dance tune (Kylie Minogue’s “I Believe in You”), also address globalization, aliens and AIDS, but with the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks approaching Friday, Conspiracy Theory couldn’t be more topical.
In addition, White House “green-jobs czar” Van Jones resigned Saturday because of the uproar caused by a petition he signed five years ago calling for an investigation into whether government officials were involved in 9/11. If I may jump on my soapbox for a moment: After seeing President Obama wimp out on the “public option” and drag his feet on gay rights, I’m especially disappointed that one of his most promising appointees could have his career derailed by the huffing and puffing of windbags like Glenn Beck, the same Fox News host who called the president a “racist.” The petitioners, 911Truth.org, released this statement Friday: “What doesn’t make sense to us is that media outlets choose to impugn the character of the signatories rather than carry out your responsibility as watchdogs to call attention to the as yet unanswered questions raised in the 2004 statement…. We challenge you to finally…pursue their answers with the same vigor with which you pursue the signatories.”
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this week Conspiracy Theory makes for particularly riveting “time-based art.”