Exercise 1 - Excavation/analysis of the boundaries between the public and private – a definition of your public and private boundaries – what makes you a citizen or denizen – document/represent your own formal, legal, personal identity in relation to your nation-state, community and professional pursuits, document what you own vs. what you use, where you live, what are your resources, where do your resources originate, what are your rights, why are these things your rights?
The ID numbers above are not the real numbers...
It was most interesting to me to explorer my birth certificate and passport in a single image. Those two documents define me in the eyes of the state. Each, however, contains a reference to a specific junction/disjunction of my identity. In the case of the birth certificate, it contains my identity as the son of Jeanne and George, but not the truth of my birth. That truth is concealed by the state under the adoption laws of the 1950s. My birth mother, the one who was actually at the hospital where the certificate was signed by the doctor, is expunged and cannot ever be re-inserted into the document.
My passport shows both the name I was given at birth and the one I chose for myself. It is the only form of identification I have which proves to the state that I am the same person as the one on the birth certificate.
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