Dear PM,
I began writing daily, diary-style letters to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien while completing my undergraduate studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999. The project was well suited to a student budget as postage to the House of Commons is free within Canada. Since January 1, 2001, I have continued this letter-writing project via email. The project began as a sort of character study, an attempt to determine how well I knew the PM. I have been aware of him for most of my adult life, have seen countless photographs, heard enough sound bites to know his voice as well as that of a close friend or family member. But who is he really? How well do any of us really know our elected officials, T.V. stars, sports heroes?
Our perception of these celebrities is shaped by newspapers, magazines, radio and television - all highly negotiated and heavily edited mediums. I decided that I wanted to engage with that process of knowledge distribution in my own manner. Combining the structure of the daily diary with the pattern of the daily news story, I made my activities - and those of my community - the subject of informative texts addressed to Prime Minister of Canada. Why should he not follow our lives with the fascination that we all follow his? But sadly, in response to over a thousand letters, I received only a handful of replies - all form letters signed by PMO correspondence officers.
The official silence that greets this project has never come as a great surprise. It highlights the divide between public and private life, between the glamour of celebrity and the often mundane pleasantries of everyday life in Canada. My initial interest in divulging personal activities and thoughts to the "powers that be" stemmed from a concern with the tightening control on human activity through increased surveillance and the proliferation of reality-type entertainment. For me, this project has a lot to do with the politics and freedom of making art in a culture that is increasingly unafraid of (not to mention entertained by) a flaunted abandonment of both personal freedoms and public space.
In sending these letters to the PM, I am attempting to fill in the gaps left by my own consumption of daily media. I think of it as a dialogue, a whole-hearted attempt to share with and inform the leader of our country of the activities of one of its citizens. It is an attempt to see if the personal is indeed political. What are the political ramifications of our daily activities? How direct or indirect is the typical citizen's engagement with the political process?
The takeover in the ranks of the Liberal Party of Canada, and subsequent electing of Paul Martin to post of Prime Minister, has done little to change the shape and direction of my project. And why would it? Has anything really changed?
Chris Lloyd
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