Witnesses is a compilation of statements culled from the comments and observations of hundreds of working class people around the world using the outsourcing application Amazon Mechanical Turk. Witnesses marks a point in time, generally between the latter two elements of Empire, when the conditions and path of globalization, as they have been generally perceived, were taken for granted in terms of proceeding unabated. Some of the observations, however, are prescient in relation to global economic events that have recently occurred.
Though many of the primary elements that contribute toward creating a “smaller” world, such as communications, will almost undoubtedly continue, there are others, such as the global initiative and reach of multinational corporations, which are now being questioned.
The sometimes very personal comments displayed in Witnesses speak to both sides of these issues. Set in a suite of 24 diptychs the responses pair commentary from residents of the United States, considered a developed country, with those from residents of mostly less developed countries around the world.