Eve Andree Laramee: I am curious about issues of authorship, the relationship between the artist and the institution. Currently I am developing a long-term performance project, Secret History, which began in 1997 and has had numerous permutations. At its inception, I conceived of it as a self-experiment on identity.
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I presented the work as a historical exhibition, complete with wall text and chronological organization, and positioned myself as the curator. I gave tours of the exhibition and fielded questions from viewers about the work. I invented documents and made photographs in which I dressed as other people. I produced hundreds of works through a fictional character, mostly works on paper, small sculptures and devices, as well as paintings

The character I invented, Yves Fissiault, was an electrical engineer (and secret artist) during the Cold War, involved in the aerospace industry for the Defense Department. He hid his artistic practice for fear of what his conservative employers might think. Fissiault was an amalgamation of a character from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and facts taken from my personal imagining of my father, who had also been an electrical engineer during the Cold War and whom I last saw when I was five years old. I have strong associations with Pynchon, whom I love for many reasons, including the way he interweaves historical fact with outrageous, ass-kicking absurdity