According to Raymond Williams, "keywords" are cultural references that expand on their etymological definitions. Every word is distinguished by a complexity of meanings that are inextricably bound up with their contemporary usage.

Keyword Project: Witness provides a visual marker of the temporary community we call Vermont College. The orange wristband allows for voluntary association with a set of common ideals or perspectives, while simultaneously including often conflicting viewpoints.

As witnesses, we are implicated in the events surrounding us and burdened with their corresponding memories. We can testify to details, elect to affect change, bear witness to events, or remain passive in our response. Regardless, we become part of a larger whole, a community of disparate perspectives that simultaneously see and become seen.

Community can be the warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or the warmly persuasive word to describe an alternative set of relationships. What is most important, perhaps, is that unlike all other terms of social organization…it never seems to be used unfavorably, and never to be given any positive opposing or distinguished term."
                                                                                           - Raymond Williams, Keywords

Installed at:   

02.05  Vermont College MFA-V Residency, Montpelier VT