Tom Borden

Bio

Tom Borden is a conceptual artist who used to live in a Turd down by the river in Half Moon Bay, CA with his wife, Amy, and their two cats, Django and Snoop Doggy Dogg. Now they live in a house. He is currently completing an MFA in New Genres at SFAI.

Statement

Evidence Free is an ongoing project that uses an illegal action as artmaking process, producing photographic images that are both witness to the crime and the final art product. I am shoplifting disposable cameras, one at a time in one store at a time, and using each camera to take a single photo of the next “victim” in the next store, before executing that next crime. The cameras are each developed with just that single photograph on them. Therefore, in the process of producing these pieces of photographic documentation the physical evidence of these crimes and of this artmaking, the disposable cameras, are destroyed. This piece raises a number of questions for me. What is the nature of victimization where the victims are accessories to the crimes? What is art that destroys that tools of its own making? What happens when two cameras stare at each other and put the viewer in between the gaze? Is photography real evidence of anything?

The project will continue until I get caught or run out of unique disposable cameras to steal, whichever comes first.