Patented Distraction is a series of work that utilizes drawings based on Directed-Energy weapons: weapons that use beams of highly focused energy waves (such as sound of light) to incapacitate a target. Directed-Energy weapons are used by US military and police. In each of the three acrylic panels, Herr hand-cuts contrasting-colored vinyl and then adheres it in dazzling patterns to compose drawings of the weapons.
Alongside this breathtaking work, Herr’s Redaction Order work is also features. Using a myriad of different vinyls cut into idiosyncratic scribbles, Redaction Order 13767 creates a redaction poem of Executive Order #13767 (Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements) to create an alternative narrative. By omitting the majority of the text in the original order, the redaction is both an assertion of resistance to the anti-immigration policies and xenophobic attitudes propagated by the Trump administration, and a cathartically hopeful exercise of a how re-imagined policy might actually strive to create equity.
Building from a lineage of WWII nautical Dazzle camouflage, the practice employed by the U.S. military in which naval ships were painted in striking geometric patterns to throw off enemy tracking, Herr’s practice employs dizzying patterns and color as strategy for subversion. Her maximalist, saturated visuals operate as both a tool for audience seduction, and as a metaphor for the dazzling effect of dominant ideology and consumerism.
