Oil and some vinegar

Born, but not bred, in a small town in central California I have vivid memories of the landscape between my little town and the communities (equally small, more-or-less) 50 or 60 miles due south along Highway 99. As a high school basketball player I traveled with my team to towns like Taft and Arvin and Bakersfield and, as our old bus chugged along we passed mile after mile of sere wasteland, brown and dusty with nothing to relieve the flatness but the oddly birdlike shapes of huge oil pumps relentlessly rising and dipping as they sucked out the black stuff that fuels our nation then and now. I remember it being a very depressing sight and without a lick of green to relieve the monotony.

As of March 5, two replicas of these monstrosities were installed in an empty lot on the corner of Eighth Ave. and West 46th St. in Manhattan. In this context (in my opinion) they become artsy fartsy with a press release as follows (possibly quoting the artist, Josephine Meckseper; you never know for sure in public-relations-speak): “I hope to draw parallels between the American industrial system, transitioning from a past of heavy industry, factories, and teamsters and the disembodied present of electronic mass-media, surface advertising, and consumerism—so clearly embodied in Times Square. The critical placement of the pumps is a conceptual gesture that raises questions about business and capital; land use and resources; wealth and decay; decadence and dependence.”

Frankly, they creep me out, possibly because of my past and the dead end they could have represented in my life. There is even a hidden sound system that replicates the creak of the original moving structures way down south on those outskirts of Bakersfield.

The only redeeming quality of this installation, called the Manhattan Oil Project, is the nice happenstance of there being a huge advertisement on an adjoining building for the Broadway revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. There you go with the decadent and the dependent.