Sea bass from Texas: notes from the material poetics project at the San Francisco waste dump

摘要

Every poem is an abstract. Three famous market makers reincarnate as fish from a bone dry country and are brutally hijacked for an excursion through a vengeful landscape of disposal. As they are returned to their wasted natural origins, they contemplate their mythical journey. This poem was written as a scratch and sniff version of research into the rotting materiality of consumer culture at the occasion of the Heretical Consumer Research Performance in October 2008. The purpose of HCR is to create a small scale experiential quests that aspire to produce epiphanies. The annual performances are collaborative events performed with a sense of radical urgency. In that respect the HCR-days are reminiscent of past innovative disruptions in consumer research that cherish the revelatory incident and that perpetuate the heretical disconnect from academic pursuits that prioritize the social re-production of research paradigms. More paradoxical evocations of affluence and superfluousness created for the Material Poetics Project may be viewed at www.hcr2008.com. Everything that happened to the Lehman Brothers and Sea Bass from Texas is real, or so the poet thinks.