Publick Spectacle, Los Angeles, California, 2019.
PØST Gallery. Hosted by MiM Gallery.
Part of the annual Kamikaze exhibitions.

Publick Spectacle, an intervention as part of PØST’s nomadic project at MiM Gallery, political stagnation, misguided patriotism, and chaotic comedy modeled around a ‘stump speech.’

The audience entered the gallery a keg of hard cider, made by the Southern California cidery “Honest Abe,” was the only object present in the gallery. It is a nod to the cider-drinking culture of colonial-era America, and the possibility that the Founding Fathers were drunk as they started a Revolution.

The playlist in the gallery was taken from a military document of tracks that had been used as musical agitation. In 1989, Noreiga holed himself up in the Vatican's embassy in Panama City, after the US invaded Panama. The embassy was surrounded by US troops who blasted a wall of sound non-stop outside by mounting loudspeakers to Humvees.

After guests had drunk their fill of hard cider everyone proceeded to the backyard area. Rachel Bullock, dressed in a white suit, took the ‘political stage’ by taking her place on top of the cross section of a tree to deliver a stump speech. The address is a redacted version of the Independence Day speech by the Prime Minister of Canada on July 1, 2015. All proper nouns had been replaced with made-up words and names through Mad Libs, a game where missing words are supplied by players.

Besides for logistical and documentary reasons, there were only a handful of people that knew about the entirety of the intervention. Several individuals acted as provocateurs during the speech.

After several rude interruptions, tension between the trouble makers and RBT built into an altercation. Mamou’s disciplinary words prompted Cassi Jerkins to pick up a pie and throw it at Bullock. This signaled the start of a 45-pie pie fight. Blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, key lime, and banana cream pies began flying across the yard. As chaos ensued, Bullock made the impromptu decision to stay on the stump and finish her speech.

There were many elements beyond our control for this intervention, and while we set the stage we did not know how it would unfold.