The lemon groves are sunken, down a three- or four-foot retaining wall, so that one looks directly into their dense foliage, too lush, unsettlingly glossy, the greenery of nightmare; the fallen eucalyptus bark is too dusty, a place for snakes to breed. The stones look not like natural stones but like the rubble of some unmentioned upheaval.
Police horses charged into crowds while squad cars zigzagged onto curbs, pinning terrified onlookers against storefront windows.
Some teenagers were watching the Pope make a fast change in a fire station from his limousine to a more famous vehicle. As the white Popemobile sped away with its gold wheel rims flashing, they gasped ‘Wow’, just like Batman!’
Allowances had to be made in the ships’ routes for offshore oil and gas platforms, coral islands just under the surface of the sea, and tiny volcanic islets strewn near the coast…
I tell ’em, “Catch me up in traffic”
If they ever ask, I won’t speak on what happened
Money talk, mine speakin’ the fastest
I remember that magical moment
When before me you appeared
Like a fleeting vision,
Like a spirit beautiful and pure
BEEP! is a multimedia exhibition featuring works by Jone Erzilla, Jasmine Gregory, Cõvco Kikaya, Sveta Mordovskaya, Fransesc Ruiz, Pasaporteman, and Jala Wahid, curated by Cory John Scozzari. The show prioritizes immersion and overlap rather than isolation and singularity. It includes performance, sculpture, installation, painting, photography and sound and although composed of discrete works by the featured artists, the pieces crash, layer, stack and blend. Some of the works speak of memory and representation, others about the accumulation and circulation of material in our globalized world, others reference the violence oftentimes present when people migrate or when certain groups seek political sovereignty, and others about consumerism and a nauseating teetering between desire and refusal. The twisted and cacophonous landscape created inside BEEP! mirrors the chaotic complexity of our present moment.
