Video, 2020.
Two scoops.
The idea for Ice Cream President was born during my revisitation of Hitman: Blood Money (2006), and I was immediately drawn to the abandoned pier and defunct ice cream truck in the game’s first mission. The focus on the truck itself in the piece was absolutely intended as a grim reference to American culture, but even more so in this case it represents former President Trump and his reported obsession with ice cream, which is why his speech is being blasted out of the truck’s loudspeakers. I was working on it during the zenith of the pandemic and the sunset months of an unchecked fascist regime, and I think my anxiety about the state of the world and outlook on the future of our country informed the bleakness of the piece. The setting is meant to feel post-apocalyptic, as if the inertia of those in power had resulted in the complete breakdown of society and the end of human contact, the only remaining evidence of the former world being this recording of our President delivering a hollow, self-aggrandizing speech that is gradually drowned out by a lilting, dirge-like version of patriotic orchestral music. It’s intentionally devoid of optimism.