Working King’s city

Last night it was a full moon over Marietta, Georgia. I’m feeling blue, lonely and ineffective as a teacher. (Is the organization I am enjoined to more effectively instill in my courses a mere unsubtle veil for the workplace procedures that follow school as night follows day? Yeah, so, what if it is? What’s your job, anyhow?)

Today Sunday I am in Atlanta to listen to a Unitarian minister talk about Martin Luther King, Jr.. King’s friend, Whitney Young, was a member of the church, and King preached there. David Keyes was interesting – on a UU theologian’s idea of God as a network, as the connection between all things, versus King’s sense of a personal God, a presence realized in adversity the night King’s life was threatened in a phone call in Birmingham. Which God don’t you believe in? Chances are I don’t believe in that God either (Paul Tillich).

Then I drop into MOCA GA, which is listed as being open. But it’s not. They are deinstalling Andrew Ross’s exhibition (some promo is at: http://www.dospestaneos.com/?q=node/46). I see a little bit, maybe a third of it as the artist scrapes it off the floor. The floor is strewn with crumpled paper. As you look at the papers, you see that tiny figures have been cut from the sheets and mounted on the floor. They form little tableaux of tiny all-white paper people, some with weird Dzamas-like headdresses, cave people creeping up on hippos, or just standing all together in lines.The installation has that special unheimlich creepy feeling as the trash turns to figuration, and the paper people coming to life.

Ross is curated into the MOCA GA space by Joey Orr, who ran the innovative Shed Space exhibition series for some years (2000-04), shows in sheds in people’s backyards (described at: http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2004-08-05/arts_visualarts.html). Seeing these fellows as they deinstall with exhibitions manager Lisa Thrower’s help was inspiring to me. An art boost!

Things may still be possible…