15 May, 2008

Untitled Performance (Cart)


For this performance, I acquired an abandoned shopping cart and filled it with approximately two-hundred pounds of dead weight (in the form of large stones and twenty-five pound sandbags procured from a construction site). At noon, alongside the heat and exhaust of the causeway, I pushed the cart from one end of the Biscayne Bay bridge to the other—and back. Finally, I abandoned the cart as I’d found it and recycled the other accessories. This was my first venture into deliberate public performance amid a random audience.

Adopting an abandoned cart as an accessory triggers the familiarity of social associations. Because their functionality befits a nomadic lifestyle, shopping carts have become associated with the poor socio-economic class. This performance alludes to the myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for the futility of mortal life. Consumerism is immersed in futile activity, and the shopping cart is an icon of consumerism. For my purposes, it mimics the nihilistic experience of carrying dead weight to-and-from arbitrary points.

This piece was performed on Saturday, 10 February 2008.

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