"Hello" is always presented as a linear narrative, a singular chain, sometimes in a loop. But the reality of making it is that connections are naturally sprawling all over the place, so I am free to edit any way I want.

In 1989 I came to New York to go to the School of Visual Arts. Then, after two years, I switched over to the New School for Social Research and did cultural anthropology in the graduate school there.

I follow these intimate connections of strangers and, surprise!, end up finding even myself in the work at some point.

"Hello" is always presented as a linear narrative, a singular chain, sometimes in a loop. But the reality of making it is that connections are naturally sprawling all over the place, so I am free to edit any way I want.

People get upset when Baghdad, the "Cradle of Civilization" is burning, or when the Buddhas in Afghanistan are falling. These are real concerns.

Dutch beaches were known to me as man-made territories, as part of various land reclamation projects. But I was also interested in the media reality of the Moon landing. I wanted to use that event as a measure of time, to see what had happened in those thirty years - which happens to be my lifetime as well. I was born in 1967 and I remember seeing the Moon landing on TV when I was two. All those things were in play. Then it became a big production. It took five months to gather up the goodwill and make it happen.

I wanted to contribute to the landscape tradition in art. By now I guess we are comfortable with the thought that man has been everywhere or affected everything in nature.