Alienation was the result of a mail-art project. The project entitled, "how do you create a terrorist?", consisted of 10 [ A6 ] postcards. Each card had a single word printed, with the instruction , "please send back one card that most conveys your response to the question - The response will be incorporated into one final artwork." The words utilised were: Alienation, Coercion, Ennui, Heritage, Oppression, Politics, Poverty, Psychology, Religion, and Vulnerability. The overwhelming response was the card printed with the word Alienation. 

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The intended purpose of this exercise or project, was to garner personal opinion, rather than factual knowledge. Terrorism is a highly emotive and enduring subject, one of utter complexity and myriad causes. Each word can be held as a truth, or emotional response, as there are no right-or-wrong answers. Personal reasons for committing such acts, whether through polemical, ideological or propagandist beliefs can be as individual as any other facets of our lives.

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The use of a Neon sign as the concluding piece, is suggestive of retail outlets, public signage and advertising, glowing in a nightly scene of attention grabbing almost autocratic superficiality. A sign of decadence, but also of warning, hence the use of red neon. Even the font used, states a sense of levity, exposing our growing sense of banality towards some aspects of terrorist atrocity. A creeping sense of news apathy descends, rendering each incident as mundane as the next.

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The pejorative connotations of the word terrorism can be summed up in the aphorism;

 

                                                                                              "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"