During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released.
But for me, it was a code I myself had invented! Yet I could not read it.
I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.
During the Cold War, we gathered information by listening to the Soviets, taking pictures of the Soviets, and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think.
Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.
When digital culture first came along, it was supposed to create more time, by allowing us to shift time around. Somehow instead we've strapped devices to ourselves that ping us all the time.
The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.
The Second World War simplified things like race, and people came down on very clear lines.