North Oakland Temporary Museum Annex

Sunday, August 21, 2005

DOBERN/SADE

The Transportation, Retrofit and Installation of the Dobern Pedestrian Bridge as Performed by the Miserable Proletariat of Lower Silver Creek Watershed Under the Direction of Scott MacLeod

Photos by Eric Evans
& Scott MacLeod, text by Peter Weiss & Scott MacLeod

An exhibition commemorating the first anniversary of the beginning of the afore-named durational performance by Scott MacLeod, which took place from 7am to 5:30pm (or later), weekdays, from August 2005 through January 2006 at two locations: the open-air yard (& adjoining walnut grove) of R&B Painting Co. just outside of Linden, 10 miles east of Stockton, California - and a PG&E easement on the shores of Lower Silver Creek in the Alum Rock neighborhood of San Jose, California.

The original performance & this exhibition have been partially funded & supported by the City of San Jose & the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

NOTE: this exhibit is mean to be viewed top to bottom. Click on images to enlarge.



ACT ONE



The procession moves towards the acting area.


We’ve got to be clothed and fed
We’re sick of working like slaves


We’ve got to have cheaper bread
While we dig our own bloody graves

Many of us die more slowly in your workshops
So what is this sacrifice?


I don’t know if I am hangman or victim

For I imagine the most horrible tortures
And as I describe them I suffer them myself


There is nothing I can’t do
And everything fills me with horror


You cannot really call this education.


I recorded the mechanics of their atrocities
In the minutest detail


And the only truths we can point to
Are the ever-changing truths
of our own experience



ACT TWO



Living in holes

Dying in holes



I dreamed only of the orifices of the body.


Collecting material
dreaming of material until I sank
into the swamps of overwork


Look at me
can you call this living?


Do you want someone to rule you?
Tell you what work you must do?


Stay wide awake and be on your guard


Stare through the failing evening light
For this is the evening before the night


I have time for nothing but work
Day and night are not enough for me

I have a task which I must carry out


I still wait for the knocking at the door


For the bayonet point pressed against my breast


I create in my mind
monstrous representatives
of a dying class

who can still exercise their power
in spectacular staged orgies


against Nature's silence I use action
in the vast indifference I invent a meaning
I don't watch unmoved I intervene

there's no singular death to be had

only an anonymous cheapened death
we dole out to entire nations
on a mathematical basis


Fanatical upstarts
With no vision and no culture


They only bring us trouble all these people
With their convulsions and complaints


As if we had nothing better to do

See how they turn their defeat into victory


Now that their pleasures have been taken away
The job saves them from boredom



Over streams and through the mud
A victory here and a victory there
For the good of all people everywhere


Things are better now
Because the poverty's been hidden

Raise your hand to heaven bend your knees
And bear your suffering without complaint

What we do is just a shadow
of what we want to do



The important thing is
To pull yourself up by your short hairs

Turn yourself inside out

And see the world with fresh eyes