INKJET ON PERFORATED VINYL
A telescreen monster greets you at the door,
six jittering screens for a torso, two for its eyes.
Everywhere exhibits of how we live amid manufactured magic.
Glimmering patio chairs and a scatter of beer cans.
Venus of the Anthropocene shut down awaiting computer repairs.
A mammoth bulldozer mouth poised to crunch what sits inside it.
A comfy chair chuffed up with bubble wrap.
A lifetime tower of pastel-painted styrofoam cups.
Chief justice imagined out of a thousand keyboard buttons.
TV screens for “Hitler Sisters” and “Spoonfeeder”
looped to pause and repeat pause and repeat pause and repeat.
In a far corner, a refugee from a previous year,
sits on a bench, his clothing muddy, tattered and gray,
his back to other human figures torn out of fantasies,
his hands at his neck holding his head bent down
as if to avoid looking at life as it passes him by.
Nam June Paik, Global Encoder, 1994
Michael Brown, Desperately Optimistic, 2006
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Venus of the Anthropocene, 2017
Janine Antoni, Cradle, 1999
Jeanne Silverthorne, Bubble Wrapped Task Chair with Rubber Base, 2016
Tom Friedman, Untitled (Styrofoam Cups), 2002
Moffat Takadiwa, The Chief Justice (3), 2018
Tamy Ben Tor, The Hitler Sisters, 2003
Danielle Kraay, Spoonfeeder, 1996
Paulo Althamer, The Power of Now, 2016
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