Graduate Studies

Interdisciplinary Master's in Art, Media and Design (MA, MDes and MFA)

Andrew Kostjuk

We Rot

“There is an ancient saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men, for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.”- Floyd Red Crow Westermann

“Focusing on the key concepts of redaction, retraction, and extraction, We Rot pinpoints a moment in which knowledge is not (in its material manifestation) permanent. Ash like snow is tranquil, blanketing and saturating. We carry knowledge as an echo – we never really have knowledge. Rather knowledge has us. The work speaks to the vital burning of dead wood which we must place upon ourselves as a means to reach our inner core of being (the truth of knowledge), burning off the weight that we carry as human beings if we are to truly free ourselves and from the ashes of the synthetic body, the fully integrated human being can flourish.”