There are limits to what one can say on a hunch. No matter how certain one may be that the assertion is correct.
For the end of 2019 and into 2020 I was working in Gulfport Mississippi on the new Mississippi Aquarium. This was a time that saw the beginning of the drawn out emergency that we are still experiencing from the Covid-19 pandemic. This post will span the time in Mississippi, New Orleans and a bit of Colorado.
As a first time visiter to the Gulfport/Biloxi area I was impressed by the hospitality shown in a town that is still recovering from hurricane Katrina and the optimism that the normal person on the street displayed.
We came to Gulfport to help build a new aquarium on the coast from scratch, everyone was excited and we were treated like family. At least some of us were.....
During my stay I began to notice through my research a distinct underbelly to the area. I mean this physically and metaphorically. There were several underground nuclear test blasts in this area, the only to be done on United States soil. These blasts, named Project Dribble, were done by the US government to see how detectable underground tests of this nature would be, or if they could be hidden. This occurred in 1964-1966. I was intrigued by this and also wondered how it was not common knowledge among Mississippians. It was like a secret out in the open and became the subject of some sketch book work. Another interesting historical path about Gulport is it's founding. The city was created by William H. Hardy and a yankee from PA- Joseph T. Jones. The later actually dredged the harbor and made the city into a working sea port.
As my research continued the history of racially motivated crimes, natural disasters and a tendency to be on the wrong side of progress in general became tiresome and I set my sites on New Orleans instead.
Only about an hour away by car I was excited to see some art in New Orleans that I had loose connection to. The permanent installation of The Music Box which is maintained and spearheaded by the art collective Air Lift.
The Music Box is a little cluster of artist made musical architectures. It functions like an amusement park of sorts. There are all kinds of ways to interact with the structures.
https://www.neworleansairlift.org/index.php/musical-architecture
Airlift has collaborated on several incarnations of The Music Box. One of these collaborations was in Tampa Bay Florida and included a collaboration with local art/design atelier Livework.
There was also an exhibition that precipitated from the actual event at the USF Contemporary Museum of Art which I was invited to and made some work for. There is a post on this blog from 2016 that covers the subject nicely.
Another fun experience born of this area was the "King for a Day" project. Based on the traditions surrounding the "King Cakes" made around the time of Maudi Gras in New Orleans and Gulfport I proposed to the supervisors at the Mississippi Aquarium work site that we bring in cakes and whomever finds the plastic baby in one of the cakes runs the site for the day. This idea was laughed off by all the supervisors but the day rolled around and I came in with 7 cakes- one with the precious plastic infant.
The night before I went to Burger King and asked for one of their paper crowns which they happily provided. I then spent some time properly decorating the crown for the new ruler of the job site.
The project was a success but the supervisors wouldn't let DQ run the job site for the rest of the day. They did reply with a surprise purchase of pizzas for the crew the following Friday.
You get what you get out of these experiments- I get a lot of joy.
