The following is an excerpt of an email from Art to the group sent 22 May 2015.
Wow!
Where to start...! You've laid out some pretty compelling options.
I like all of it, but I think I like the packaged trash idea the most.
And then, once we've got them hooked, take it to the next level: packaged nothingness (I like that my phone knows when I type "packaged" that the next word is "nothingness.")
I think some of the other options are too difficult and distract from the "empty frames" motif that is central to the project.
We could even give the whole thing a bogus charitable pretense too, like so many cults and large-group awareness trainings promote to distract attention away from their brainwashing and/or profiteering activities. Maybe pictures of the place the trash was picked up? Maybe suggesting that you have in some sense "adopted" that spot? Maybe that you can keep buying trash from this one spot in Detroit in order to keep transporting it out of town--with the hilarious aspect being that we create more packaging to do this! Then again, maybe that's too much content. I think the point is to have context without text...or tent without content?
Here are some posts that might provide some insight as to why the empty/trash-filled box makes a LOT of sense:
Actually, a lot of stuff in the April - May 2014 range deals with nothingness in a box, in a frame, on stage.
Other fun tidbits:
- Can we get people to buy nothingness from Detroit? Like having a little black hole in your living room radiating street cred. Better than a "Detroit vs. Everybody" shirt. Of course, don't get too close to the event horizon of the box. Kind of like tanning.
- I guess I can see the relevance of transporting bat shit and ghosts out of Detroit too. All these things--trash, nothingness, black holes, bat shit, ghosts--seem to fit into the same category.
- Like Henry Ford before him, Dan Gilbert is definitely basking daily in the dark light of the lodestone, listening to The Most Authentic Detroiter Ever speed rap in Old Icelandic.
- Who is making these products? Followers of Farthington? Of Steffi? Of Victoria Woolf or Shakespeare's Sister? It feels like some of the latter-day, post-Farthington people. I like them being members of some kind of female-only version of Yahowa's Savage Sons. The Savage Daughters of Shakespeare's Sister? Sworn enemies of Dan Gilbert, buying up vacant lots in Detroit and fighting his henchmen on the banks of the river beneath a river. I'm not sure if they are friendly, hostile, or indifferent to Arthur White and company. And they live in harmony with the land. So it makes sense that they might sell Poop Paper, Guano Tea, Moisturizers, Dung Masks, Sea Salt Scrubs. Maybe it doesn't make sense that they create more packaging.
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