the slow violence of the cube (and Marfa)

I open the curtains near my desk to look out the window onto the pastures beyond the trunk of a dead elm tree in our backyard. years ago it was struck by lightning during a storm and the damage was instant. the tree died and my dad had to cut it. we have never had a fence around our house instead it's a wide-open view of a field and grain silos and highway running adjacent to us. the color palette of the plains in February is yellow and brown and blue and right now because of the snow there is a thin layer of white. it’s freezing and windy so I don’t go outside just look out the windows waiting for a change in the landscape. six months ago there was flooding and the land behind my house was a lake and egrets waded in the shallows plucking frogs out and eating them as easily as if they were hor d’oeuvres. august seemed to be an eternal happy hour for the migratory birds.

and in the meantime, I read about a gallery in Marfa that opened recently. of course the story appeared in the New Yorker because Marfa is the sort of place that attracts the attention of the New Yorker. I can’t say I understand the “art world” where a physical gallery called Art Blocks hosts NFTs which of course I also do not understand NFTs and all I ever read about them is how terrible they are for the environment or how people make ridiculous amounts of money buying and selling them. But there is Marfa with an NFT space. I am sitting at my desk reading a book about slow violence (from Rob Nixon) and I think about the invisible violence of our everyday lives. since an NFT consumes so much energy, is it a new type of violence?

in Lucy Lippard’s “Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, And Art in the Changing West,” Lippard writes that “artists are good at slipping between the institutional walls to expose the layers of emotional and esthetic resonance in our relationships to place. They can ask questions without worrying about answers.” which I love to do. ask questions with no clear answers. like le flaneur, as coined by Baudelaire, I prefer to meander about and observe contemporary life (and art not exclusive to just institutions) without trying to formulate an answer. for me, the importance is in considering the question.

I should be honest and admit that I prefer Alpine to Marfa. and that when art attracts attention, I am less interested in the art itself but rather — the place where the art is located, the cost of that art, and of course, the politics. Marfa is home to the tiny Prada storefront, Ballroom Marfa, the Chinati, and the Lannan Foundation which houses artists and poets and awards grants in the name of “cultural freedom.” There is also a border patrol station in Marfa and several migrant detention facilities within a two hour drive. Not exactly the image sold in the New Yorker or to visitors making the trip down South.

maybe I don’t understand how the art world works. maybe all the tourists are good for the local economy. I hope there are some benefits to the residents of Marfa. I hope the artists and poets that travel to Marfa to take photos in front of Prada Marfa do not ignore the real violence of US Customs & Border Patrol.

And then I read about the cube in Central Park — an $11.7 million dollar cube made of gold that is, put there by an artist named Niclas Castello. if you have ever been inside a museum, you know art must be protected — by glass or by a sign that says no touching or by a border of tape you cannot cross or by that unpaid docent following you from room to room but most definitely always by surveillance. the cube has a security detail of course. there cannot be expensive art without surveillance. consumption at a price. and let us not forget Seneca Village, the land and people that Central Park was built over.

“‘In a message sent this morning to Artnet News, Castello called the work “a conceptual work of art in all its facets.’ He said the idea was to ‘create something that is beyond our world — that is intangible.’”

intangible indeed. making a gold cube worth $11.7 million dollars is a completely intangible idea to me. it is intangible to me to put such a installation in Central Park just a few weeks after an apartment fire in the Bronx killed 17 people, which happened because of an electric space heater, which would not have been needed if the building supplied proper heat to the residents. I spent a month in New York during December, staying inside an apartment in Queens, and can count on my hands the number of times the building heater came on, even when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees. we used a small space heater when there was no other warmth. not surprising that the owners of the building received housing subsidies or had caches of investments in real estate.

so while there is enough energy for NFTs and cryptocurrencies the cost of energy to supply sufficient heat for a 19 story building is too great. I mention this because the artist of the cube is also launching a cryptocurrency. According to the same Art Net article, “The Castello Coin, traded as $CAST, is available for purchase online at an initial price of €0.39 ($0.44) each, with an accompanying NFT auction scheduled for 21 February.”

when I read that, I thought of artist Gabriel Orozco, who defined conceptual art “as the expression of feelings, appropriation of space, of objects — the physical act separated from the sculptor, painter or photographer” (https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/art-is-the-opposite-of-spectacle-the-stunning-notebooks-of-gabriel-orozco/). so yes I am astounded at the detachment of art from time and place and in many ways, from people, even though I am a poet and I arguably also make “art.” I have no job and instead have time to learn about art and research cryptocurrencies while also simultaneously reading about various types of violence, created by class or white supremacy, or governments. sometimes I wonder if my relationship to art is a kind of cruel optimism, an obstacle to my glow up. if Lauren Berlant were still alive, I would ask if I misunderstood the idea — which happens frequently. in the meantime, I will continue to stare out my window and watch the snow melt into patches of dead grass, returning this land to an endless sea of dirt and dust.