2 channel video and sound
JCAST October 3 – 4, 2018
Delivered Vacant is a reflection on financial speculation and overt erasures, the hollowing of culture, and our bold disregard. Delivered Vacant looks at a much too familiar sight happening across the U.S.: empty storefronts and the erosion of our main street communities. What once were vibrant, are now left empty and vacant. The establishment awaits for markets to correct while people are left immobile. Pristine empty spaces priced far out of reach appear along more than 40 empty storefronts, telling the community they are not welcome to participate. The voices and faces of the people reflect the cultures left on the peripheral. The obstructers, familiar and strange, greet them in the streets and know their names. The sounds from a recent street festival soul train line permeates incongruent within the walls of the empty facades.
This has been in the works for some time,“The direction of change is toward a new central city dominated by middle-class residential areas, a concentration of professional administrative and managerial employment, the upmarket recreation and entertainment facilities that cater to this population (as well a tourists) . . . The moment of the present restructuring is toward a more peripheralized working class, in geographical terms.(1986)” from Hollow City.
The steeples are empty and so are the people,
There’s nothing whatever to see
Except for – – that pass in their motors
And play concertinas at night,
They think that things are all right,
-Wallace Stevens