Vote early and often at a political art experience: the "Primary Caucus"

All photos of the tour taken by Ray Ray Miltrano 7/1/16

City, June 29th – July 5th, 2016

After A Trumprenuer on the road at Trumpmania, I was intrigued reading about Ray Ray Miltrano’s exhibit Primary Caucus in the Visual Studies Workshop.

Ray Ray 7/1/16

A Master’s of Fine Arts degree candidate in SUNY Brockport’s Visual Studies Program, Ray Ray’s Primary Caucus is part of his year long thesis work in the trajectory of the 2016 elections.

Based on exhaustive research — on his thesis bookmark page I tallied 52 so far — Ray Ray has constructed an intricate and compelling participatory gallery installation.

At first glance, the project space feels like the backroom of a campaign war room headquarters: loose stacks of voter registration cards, the Big Board national electoral map, and thumbtacked construction sheets representing state by state results from ethanol Iowa to territorial Virgin Islands.

The exhibition invites the viewer to follow the primaries through a series of methaphorically-charged voting venues, as well as the puzzling but not indecipherable hanging charts representing the election outcomes and their sub plots.

Upon beginning the tour, I was glad Ray Ray does not have a photo ID requirement. But played it safe.

Iowa is first (pictured above), commanding outsized visual attention fitting its disproportional weight in the primaries. As a time-consuming, convoluted, open caucus, Iowa demands mathematical scrutiny. I needed the magnifying glass to see both a quarter and the results measured to three decimal places.

The Republican side of Iowa — titled “Blow Voting” — suggested viewer participation. But the GOP caucus is a non-binding straw poll so it doesn’t matter anyway. Blowing and holding my nose while voting, I dunked my ballot based on the candidate symbol the snot on my tissue most resembled.

At “Threshold Voting” — where votes disappear under a door — my choice was Andrew Jackson. In return for a generous campaign donation, I hope to receive a favorable anti-trust exemption in case the D & C gets up Talker‘s butt for using our old blogs.

“Roast Campaign” and “Grind Affiliate” represent the winnowing down of candidates — including your prefered candidate (mine was Lincoln Chafee) — into the homogenous Duopoly of two-party platforms more similar than not.
The voting table asked viewers to use both One Choice Voting (basically the N.Y. closed primary method) and Ranked Choice Voting (used in some city councils and often in private sector voting such as the Academy Awards).

Friday’s vote was an empirical study for Ray Ray. He determined that — at least last night — people changed their prefered first choice as they moved from One Choice and Ranked Choice. Also, one voter made the effort to stack about 12 blank ballots into his/her clothespin.

As far as I was concerned, there was only ONE CHOICE. In my Ranked Choice, I placed Minority Reporter second, the Brighton-Pittsford Post third and the City fourth.

Primary Caucus succeeds by cleverly defamiliarizing the voting process: weird symbols, clothespins, magnifying glasses, string, mini-flashlight, coffee grinders, roasters and bean. And Kleenex. But it is defamiliarization with a point.

While the exhibit raises issues of gerrymanderying, recounts, voter fraud and suppression, party affiliation and third parties, it prescribes no one reform, solution or alternative. It does prescribe engagement — within and without the gallery space.

Funneled through the primaries, I realized again that the political operatives in their war rooms know every wrinkle of election law and practices. And — as best we can if not 52 bookmarks — so should we. It’s your ballot. Own it.

A Trumprenuer on the road at Trumpmania

Philip Lange at the Visual Studies Workshop 7/1/16

POSTSCRIPT

When experiencing Primary Caucus, also see Portraits by Philip Lange (VSW ’83), a fascinating exhibit documenting the Maasii Stoves in Tanzania.

For many years a fulltime RCSD art teacher, Phil is now an occasional substitute in the district, as I was a few years ago. Phil will entirely corroborate that students frequently are convinced we are the same person or at least brothers.

When we traveled around the district, students would invariable call me Mr. Lange and call Phil, Mr. Kramer. I’ve had students run up to me saying, Mr. Lange, remember me from 5th grade? One girl at SOTA — no matter what counter arguments offered — was adamant: I was Philip Lange. Phil has had similar experiences.