A Public Misery Message, was designed as temporary public art for a US city. The Reagan/Bush era was coming to a close, and the financial restructuring of the classes was complete: The top wealth holders in America controlled more wealth than at any previous time in American history. At the same time, the hegemony of identity politics in American "leftist" discourse had extremely diminished the value of class as a variable for social analysis. Critical Art Ensemble wanted to place in the public sphere a reminder of the significance of class in the construction of power (domination) matrices. To accomplish this task, the collective wanted to create a concrete illustration of class structure in the US. After doing some simple math, CAE devised a scale for measuring the separation of the classes relative to wealth (total assets). The collective then decided to make a banner that illustrated class separation to scale. Unfortunately, this was beyond CAE's means. While the bottom four classes could be proportionately separated with a banner of only 4 meters, the inclusion of the top wealth holders expanded the banner to 174 meters. We had neither the money to buy materials for the banner, nor a location to show it, nor did we ever find anyone to sponsor the project.
CAE did make a miniature model of the piece that was 5.5 meters in height (see photo). The top wealth holders' section was truncated with "550 feet" (170 meters) marking the gap. To give an idea of the tremendous height the banner should actually have had, the collective sent up helium-filled balloons on a 170-meter string. This miniature version of the banner was installed on private property in Tallahassee, Florida. The property was located across from a Florida bank and approximately 100 meters from the Florida Governor's mansion. Within 24 hours, police arrived and removed the banner, claiming that it violated city codes for advertising billboards. The 170 meter banner was never realized, nor did CAE get to fulfill the dream of hanging the banner from a corporate or government office skyscraper in a major US city.
Existing Documents:
A slide of the miniature.
A self-adhesive flyer with the illustration on it.
A Public Misery Message, was designed as temporary public art for a US city. The Reagan/Bush era was coming to a close, and the financial restructuring of the classes was complete: The top wealth holders in America controlled more wealth than at any previous time in American history. At the same time, the hegemony of identity politics in American "leftist" discourse had extremely diminished the value of class as a variable for social analysis. Critical Art Ensemble wanted to place in the public sphere a reminder of the significance of class in the construction of power (domination) matrices. To accomplish this task, the collective wanted to create a concrete illustration of class structure in the US. After doing some simple math, CAE devised a scale for measuring the separation of the classes relative to wealth (total assets). The collective then decided to make a banner that illustrated class separation to scale. Unfortunately, this was beyond CAE's means. While the bottom four classes could be proportionately separated with a banner of only 4 meters, the inclusion of the top wealth holders expanded the banner to 174 meters. We had neither the money to buy materials for the banner, nor a location to show it, nor did we ever find anyone to sponsor the project.
CAE did make a miniature model of the piece that was 5.5 meters in height (see photo). The top wealth holders' section was truncated with "550 feet" (170 meters) marking the gap. To give an idea of the tremendous height the banner should actually have had, the collective sent up helium-filled balloons on a 170-meter string. This miniature version of the banner was installed on private property in Tallahassee, Florida. The property was located across from a Florida bank and approximately 100 meters from the Florida Governor's mansion. Within 24 hours, police arrived and removed the banner, claiming that it violated city codes for advertising billboards. The 170 meter banner was never realized, nor did CAE get to fulfill the dream of hanging the banner from a corporate or government office skyscraper in a major US city.
Existing Documents:
A slide of the miniature.
A self-adhesive flyer with the illustration on it.