Bound as we are by those aspects of modern society regarded commonly as truth _restricted, as it were, by contemporary dogmata_ we are not free. Laws, posing as fact and therefore imposing, attempt to describe, regulate, uphold and protect that which is held to be true at the time. Their status is subject to change. This is not freedom, though we are tempted to believe it is. Freedom is an ideal, a fiction. As such it can neither be governed nor protected by law. Only in the absence of governance _in the absence of truth as fact_ can we be truly free...
from introduction toBOOK OF LIES, Volume I, 1991, an international collaborative work of art and poetry about truth and lies conceived by Los Angeles conceptual artist and friend
Eugenia P. Butler (1947-2008)