hannah höch of the berlin dada movement was known for her cutting photomontages. however, a lesser known work in her oeuvre is her sammelalbum... a diverse scrapbook of appropriated images she collected for her own pleasure & use. these jarring photo collages are arranged in contradictory sequences and the order and layout of the book possesses a filmic quality. this book, as well as the ritual and tradition of zines in diy culture, were the major influences of secret password.

a list about secret password ii: 

† alternative cartographies, cultural and political 

† the visual language of 90s television and color, changing channels, noise music, radio waves, and nam june paik's global groove 

† the return of photomontage 

† technology, secrets, sex, the occult. memory scapes, herspace 

† ballard-ian style depersonalization and the exigencies/failures of metaphor 

† the role of tradition in postmodern life, its subversion and its observation 

† performative acts and their juxtapositions, the documentation of these acts/performance for the camera 

† biology as abstraction and as metaphor 

† a critique of realism/verite, possibly in search of what herzog may call the ecstatic truth 

† the purposeful fragmentation and re-splicing together of urban landscapes in order to recreate space visually 

† pairing images of religious fundamentalism and images of the city as terrain for the free reign of the commodity... 

† the ability to pick up different identities as if they are commodities, passion and orthodoxy 

† fragmentation socially, spatially, and psychically, the commodity-form as the only unifying thread 

+ a representation of desire to escape this ensnarement or deadlock