Carla Harryman, Cleveland

5:00

There isn’t much left of The American Dream ice sculpture. It has melted more quickly than anticipated. While we had imagined the emergence of new linguistic possibilities and indications of morphological promise, what happened resulted in a series of abrupt explosions leaving truncated limbs of letter supported on serifs. What remains are the thinning letters ERI DRE. How might I represent this effect visually in a word program? ERI __+)*~=_DRE.  To work with the remains of explosive collapse beyond a cursory comment or gesture here or there, may take more time than what is left in this day.

A comment just overheard included the criticism that any message that takes time, more than a couple of seconds to assimilate,  is not revolutionary.

5:44

Drawn to the dynamics of destruction and “making,” I had been planning on an impossible project that would use textual excerpts taken from the 1920s and 1930s. My thought was to write some translations and alterations beginning around the time the ice began to melt.

The time of composition moves slowly while ice melts more quickly in summer sun. Thus I have concluded with one alteration, a collaboration between John Maynard Keynes and Gertrude Stein:

So then as I was saying it is very confusing and sometimes in them, the kind of sensitiveness in them from many pseudo moral principles which have weighed down on us for there is in each kind of being, in independent dependent being, for 200 years and through which we have lavishly raised some in dependent independent being of the most repellent human qualities to the rank of virtues a kind of way of yielding

from The Making of Americans (1925) and Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930) as quoted in Utopia Toolbox. 1 by Juliane Stiegele

‘the american dream’

stood awhile

then began to crash, lit from below perhaps

i hear a voice say, “it said, The American Dream”

i expected all all manner of deconstruction

dream went

cris cheek, Cleveland

of the disintegrating dreams of the disintegrating american

“It’s the American Dream baby, the baby American dreaming of a baby American baby”

cris cheek, Cleveland

Carla Harryman, Cleveland

1:24

The American Dream is melting here on the corner of Church Street and W. 29 in Cleveland

1:35

As I was stating to cris cheek the other day as we discussed the durational project of our witnessing its meltdown, I only have antagonistic associations with the phrase, whose codification arrives in the early 1930s, or perhaps in the 1920s.

2:00

My view of the phrase as a cover for nationalistic ideology, exceptionalism, and its multiple histories and currencies of violence, in some company goes without stating. Whatever is happening just down the road says it all.

This reference to down the road is open to projection.  But “you know what I mean.” I mean, when was the last time one listened when TAD was invoked? What do I attune to in its disappearance? Ta ta old man!  Though M whom I conversed with earlier today would comment with a sense of her particular immigrant circumstance that it’s going to mean something different for everyone.  Just now someone on the green is noting that it lends itself to isolationism. My sense is M does not want to see it go, and for her, the anti-immigration hyperbole down the road is the source of its disappearance.

I search for the language
that is also yours—

almost all our language has been taxed by war.

–Allen Ginsberg

2:32:

But here the physical, digital, and conceptual meet, and the ice sculpture is already showing signs of fragility. Its prism thinning, the ice letters become more transparent to the band aid-colored paint of a neighborhood building. The shadow moves to purple.

The disparity of wealth makes history.

.

“The shape of the letters causes them to bear weight differently”

‘But there has also been the American Dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth for position.’

James Truslow Adams, The American Dream 1931. Adams introduces the phrase ‘the American Dream’ into print in the Epilogue to his book.

Note, pressure on gender and ‘innately’ in this passage

cris cheek, Cleveland

Mary E. Weems, Cleveland

Amistad

Myth

Erection

Republic

Indian Killing

Christian

Atheists

Narrow

Dirt

Rape

Erase

Antithesis

Murder

***

American Dream

I’ve never had one

word without African

empty as whole waiting for something.

***

The American Ream

***

American Musical

Gene Kelly Dances across letters

he is also ice

his feet fast

begin to melt

he is ankles hobbling

over AMERICAN

he is on his knees

his prayer is drips

on the sidewalk

the letters are lit like a Broadway sign

all light white

Gene Kelly is the light

turns

turns it out

melts.

***

Watching the letters drip like sweat on a slave’s, sharecropper’s, [ill]egal

immigrant’s back, I notice

how it disappears like opportunity in America.

***

Letters are clear

shaped like ones

on American money

ancestors appear

in space between

faces misshapen puzzles

mouths open

hands touching a letter

The three A’s become shadows

strangers landing no shore.

***

Ice impermanent as the middle class

as out of place as waste.

***

cris cheek, Cleveland

Ice was harvested in Akron in the 1880s by ice farmers promising ‘a superior class’ of ice

A superior glass, stripped from ponds under contract to reap Summit Lake, White Pond, Black Pond and Crystal Lake

Once the ice got to be 8-10″ thick, blocks 22″ by 22″ were marked out by plow, cut and moved to storage in nearby ice houses by an endless chain conveyor, before becoming planed and stored. Ice cakes were packed onto a 2″ bed of wild hay or straw.

One American Dream is of ice automatically tumbling into one’s glass of water like there’s fever in the funk house now

Ice created in the house, not brought into the house

Ice harvesting paved the skids for the modern

But the increased population introduced germs and sewage one source into the ponds and lakes that were preserved in the ice served at the tables of those who could afford it

cris

Justin Glanville, Cleveland

So far, it’s just an M.

But then that, too, goes away — hidden under a plastic bag atop a plain gray platform.

From beneath the bag escapes a wisp of vapor, evidence of the dry ice underneath that’s keeping the ‘M’ from melting. So far.

You see, the letters are ice. And in today’s 80 degree weather, they aren’t expected to last long. Maybe a few hours.

“It’ll spell ‘The American Dream,’” says Aaron Costic. He owns Elegant Ice, the local company that carved the letters based on a design by Brooklyn artist Marshall Reese.

Costic started working on the letters about three weeks ago. He says he’s excited to work on a project that features the “fourth dimension” of time. And he agrees with the concept of the piece, a statement on the ephemerality of our national ideal of prosperity for all.

“The gap between the wealthy and the lower-class just keeps getting wider,” he says.

Aaron Costic, of Elegant Ice. The letters are still under wraps!

About 75 people gather on a lawn around the sculpture, their chatter rising in volume as the unveiling approaches.

There’s a countdown. “Five, four, three, two, one!”

The bags are removed, the ‘M’ returns. There it is, framed against Downtown Cleveland’s sky-piercing gray and brown towers, which might as well be shouting “Money!” In their shadows, delegates gather for the Republican National Convention.

The letters begin to drip immediately. People snap photos.

As I watch, I wonder: Is it the concept or the spectacle that’s stirring excitement? The mood overall is cheerful, chatty — not at all in keeping with the dark theme. Maybe it’s too dark to truly engage on such a beautiful blue-skied day.

It will be interesting to see if this changes as the letters melt. For now, they appear stable, whole. Times New Roman, 48 point, bold.

In a few hours, they’ll be hollowed out and dripping. Gothic or Zapf Dingbats — and perhaps looking more like question marks than letters.

Carla Harryman, Cleveland

It’s up and already melting.

Isn’t it the truth. We’ve been here for 55 years.

From?

Bermuda.

*

TAD

“melt baby melt”