Gregory Green

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Since the mid 80’s, Gregory Green has exhibited homemade bombs, illustrating societies negligence towards terrorism. He believes, "the real potential for chaos that is out there - the more we ignore the disenfranchised, the more the possibility of horror exists". Green was born 1959 in Brooklyn, but spent most his childhood in Europe, which he describes as “the battleground for the third World War”, reflecting his anxieties. In 1981, he received a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Ohio and in 1984, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Green considers his American nationality responsible for his belief in an individual’s power to change political systems. Green believes his lack of technical training, makes the statement, “if some yahoo from Brooklyn, with no technical training, can do these things then anybody can do them.” He uses all commercially available materials and instructions easily acquired from books, magazines and the Internet. The political message underlying Greens work could class it as agitprop.

Green’s artwork risks getting himself arrested. To Greens knowledge the: Dutch Secret Service, FBI, various police departments in the United States, postal service in the United States, the German police, French secret service and British police, have investigated him. He was investigated by the Chicago Police Department, July 21st 1995, "suitcase bomb".

Green was arrested shortly afterwards in August 1995, from the artwork “10,000 doses”, showing the disturbance that could be caused from LSD. It consisted of 12 laboratory bottles filled with an amber substance (not LSD), by a six-foot high recipe of how to make LSD from The Anarchist Cookbook. The Police Crime Lab’s test results for the substance were positive, and Green received much media attention. Days later, the initial lab findings proved negative.

Green is describing modern culture, without making the work overly personal. "I don't take any clear moral stance.” He believes, "If you look at terrorism in a cold way, it is a media spectacle that is strong enough to give the terrorist a platform. My work has been a kind of conceptual terrorism giving me a platform." Although Green discovered American media does not cover culture well, he says “in Europe I would use these exhibitions to enter into the media whether it's radio, television or print, and then talk about alternatives to the use of violence and the reality of the potential for violence out there.” He thinks of his art as a ‘game’ to get into the media. Whilst Dali does this for personal gain, Green aims to affect society, by making a political statement. Comparable to Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp, and his ‘readymades’, it questions whether art needs modification. Green questions, “What's the difference between this and art? If I was photographing an actual bomb, would that be art? I think of it as representational sculpture. You can also think of the work as sort of social performance in a way.” The social performance describes the media and societies response to his artwork. Although Green’s main interest is the power of bombs, he also creates other things dangerous to society such as: computer viruses, pirate television and radio stations.

Today Green lives and works in New York. Green told a newspaper several years ago he believed terrorists would eventually destroy the Twin Towers. “The events that have recently happened, September 11, actually make my work more relevant, more pertinent to our world.”