Located in Fort Mill, South Carolina, what’s left of Heritage, USA is buried in a clusterfuck of new developments and winding roads. The Heritage Grand Tower (supposedly time-shares) is easy to see in the skyline from afar.
Artist’s rendering
Current state (as of Winter, 2006).
One of my favorite spots to visit was the old arcade – The King’s Castle. The whole building looks like a stereotypical castle that had been flattened. Last time I was there it was still pretty easy to hop the fence and crawl through a broken window. Religious slogans were still visible on the wall–it made me wonder what kind of games they had–especially any coin-op video games. Donkey Christ? God-man? I guess they had skee-ball, which I think even fundamentalists would have a hard time screwing up.
Our Mission Statement: To provide quality family entertainment in a Christian atmosphere which will give honor and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The one thing I did find absolutely gorgeous about the arcade was the light raking through the broken windows. But even that was hard to capture with my camera.
Here’s a couple of videos I shot in the arcade to give you a better idea of the space. This is only the first floor–there was a second floor as well as roof access.
I found the little pamphlet that I picked up when I visited the Salton Sea, and I think it’s worth sharing. My favorite part is when they try to argue that it’s not the lake full of rotting fish that smells, but rather the manure rendering plant 50 miles away. Required reading.
Arguably the opposite of poetry, I figured this seems an appropriate venue to share the treasures I’ve found on YouTube–specifically its seemingly complete archive of every single music video ever made. Eat your heart out MTV. I’ll kick it off with this sarcastic video from one of my favorite bands, The Wedding Present, performing their stellar track ‘Brassneck’ from 1989’s Bizarro. Enjoy.
With Tammy Faye Messner (a Minnesota native) recently deceased, this seems like a good time as any to share some of my knowledge/documents about the bizarre Christian theme-park/resort town/church community that her and Jim Bakker started up in the late 70’s–Heritage USA.
My personal experience with this place is only limited to a few visits to its grave. For a while I was very interested in abandoned theme parks, and this one was pretty memorable due to the religious foundation. An acquaintance who had grown up in the community figured I’d want to check it out and was my personal tour guide. I shot loads of film and video, but couldn’t for the life of me find a way to make art out of it. I could only come back with documents, some of which I’ll post for you in Part 2.
I’m not going to go into a lot of the historical details–Wikipedia has a pretty good history of the place–I’d rather just give a few impressions and encourage people to visit if they can. The area is undergoing a lot of change at the moment (a new ministry has purchased the land is trying to revitalize the area), so you’re bound to see something different with each trip. Plus, I don’t think I’ll ever go back there, so I’d like to hear other people’s impressions.
The one thing that I do find interesting about this place is that it was THE capital for weirdo fundamentalist Christians. I mean, if you had some strange right-wing belief (or apparently just looked strange), chances are you could go to Heritage USA and get on TV. Looking through a book about Jim & Tammy Fae Bakker and their Heritage Village Church, I found a lot of great pictures of some of their guests. Can you guess which decade this was?
Jim “I dressed myself” Warnke
Tammy Faye & Mr. “I pity the fool that don’t believe in the lord Jesus Christ” T.
Tammy Sue, Tammy Faye’s daughter, who strikingly resembles a young Roseanne Barr @ Glamour Shots.
Easily one of the top-three photoblogs, Joerg Colberg’s Concientious is a must-read. In a not-so-recent post about Andrea Stern’s book Inheritance, Colberg wrote of “amateurish” found photography “…the fascinating aspects of which simply escape me. Maybe it’s because found photography too often contains an aspect of making fun of others (who can’t defend themselves, since they’re absent).” While I mostly agree with Colberg’s sentiment, I feel he’s brushing found photography off a little too quickly.
First of all, any photograph, whether it is found or created (and let’s not even get into the difference between those two…), is open to Colberg’s criticism regarding subjects not being able to defend themselves. Secondly, I believe found photography is often considered weak due to it’s popular venues–usually one-off instances of ‘hey, look at this cool picture I found’, or, ‘whoa, this is a crazy photo I found’–photo blogs that only post one picture at a time, or even Found Magazine. Admittedly, these venues exist to give readers easily digestible chunks of interesting things, and therefore cannot be critiqued for their shallow treatment of their topics. BUT, when this remains often the ONLY venue in which found photographs are seen, then we have a problem.
Devil’s Advocate: Found photographs are often exhibited by themselves because that is how we first encounter them–divorced from context, usually in the garbage, on the side of the road, etc.
Counter Argument: Aha! But isn’t that how photographers find the photographs that they themselves make? I would find it hard to believe that while Robert Frank was working on The Americans that he found all the pictures he wanted to make at the same time, in the same place.
May I suggest a few works that involve found photography that I believe are quite excellent and on par with any photographer who ‘makes’ her own photographs:
Evidence – Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan
Seriously, this is one of those classics that I continue to go back to. It’s about as simple as a photo-book can get, and it is gloriously absurd in its simplicity. I remember reading somewhere (maybe the recent Artforum article) about how the sequencing was totally random, but I find it absolutely perfect. Wouldn’t change a thing. Actually, I’d use the picture of the guy getting his head set on fire for the cover.
Floh – Tacita Dean
I got this book a few months ago, and I totally didn’t get it the first time. It actually frustrated me that I didn’t get it, so much so, that I had to revisit it again and again. While it can easily be said that if you spend enough time with any work it will become meaningful, I don’t think that’s the case here. I think it took time to warm up to not because the content is difficult, but rather the description is a bit misleading. The blurb that I had read dealt with the process of Dean finding the photographs at flea markets and didn’t really say anything about the actual photographs, which is a shame, because together they form a beautiful body of work. I’m reminded of Jason Fulford’s recent work in that the images–on the surface–seem rather disconnected. But flip through the book a few times and you’ll find deeply intelligent & poetic connections that might make you slap your forehead.
Michael Lesy – Wisconsin Death Trip
This book is a mind-fuck. A highly interpretive historical account of a small town in Wisconsin, Lesy (a historian at the time), sequenced found photographs with newspaper clippings and took generous liberties in his cropping and arrangement. The result is a strange half-fiction of a town, unsure if it actually exists, but with pictures too bizarre to make you think otherwise. I found a review on Amazon.com that sums it up beautifully:
“James Warner (CHICAGO, IL United States) –
the pictures in this book explain a lot to me,seeing as my family originally came from this part of wisconsin. and many of them were insane.”
In my own work I use found photographs quite a bit–I’ve got a show of found sunsets and landscapes at the Minnesota Center for Photography opening August 4th. If you’re in town, you should check it out. I find that this world is already littered with so many photographs, it often doesn’t make sense to re-make pictures that already exist. Regardless, whether you find your pictures in the dumpster or through a viewfinder, it’s the finding part that proves to be the most thrilling.
By the way, if anyone has a good recommendation for the antonym of ‘found photography’, let me know, I’m at a loss.
While I realize that this topic is, like, so June 2007, I had set aside some images of mine that I worked on in school that I felt were quite appropriate to the discussion. Basically, in my last semester I realized that I would no longer have access to a huge B/W darkroom and print processor, so I went nutz on the big pictures and ideas I had wanted to try out, but never found time for.
The first of these experiments was covering my door in photo paper at night and seeing what the hell would happen. Well, this is what happens:
I thought it was interesting, and it immediately made me want to go bigger–this eventually led to the blueprinting of entire rooms (example here), a project which I still work on (and have a solo show in Summer 2008 in Minneapolis of).
The other pieces I did weren’t as exciting, but I found the process extremely entertaining. What I did was cover the bottom of my skateboard in glow-in-the-dark material, and then set up a modest skateboard course in the darkroom. My skating in the dark was recorded by the glowing skateboard exposing the paper on the floor. Here are a few pieces (each 3 feet by 10 feet, roughly):
I promise more posts will be on their way–I’ll be dealing with juicy topics such as found photography, Christian amusement parks, and pedophilia. I’m currently getting ready for a show at the Minnesota Center for Photography–I’ll post some pictures as soon as I get around to it.
Call me a little naive, but I don’t know why Alec Soth is making such a big deal over Tod Papageorge. I mean, the guy makes some good pizzas, and the prices are totally reasonable, but a ‘masterpiece’? I don’t think so.
Dumped? Heart-broken? In a messy relationship? Here are five albums that won’t make you shed a tear in your beer, but instead let you know that you aren’t the first person to feel this way (and that others are much better at articulating those feelings).
5. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (2007)
I’ve already written about how great this album is–as a concept album, as a dance party-starter, and as a jogging soundtrack, but I didn’t touch at how well this album addresses the complexities of a break-up. Even though this album is still pretty damn new, it has some future-classic heartbreak lines. I can’t even pick a section from the 12-minute epic ‘The Past is a Grotesque Animal’, so I’m just going to post the lyrics here:
The past is a grotesque animal
And in its eyes you see
How completely wrong you can be
The sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday
Makes you wonder why it bothered
I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met
Who could appreciate George Bataille
Standing at Swedish festival discussing “Story of the Eye”
Discussing “Story of the Eye”
It’s so embarrassing to need someone like I do you
How can I explain I need you here and not here too
How can I explain I need you here and not here too
I’m flunking out, I’m flunking out
I’m gone, I’m just gone
But at least I author my own disaster
At least I author my own disaster
Performance breakdown and I don’t want to hear it
I’m just not available
Things could be different but they’re not
The mousy girl screams, “Violence! Violence!”
The mousy girl screams, “Violence! Violence!”
She gets hysterical because they’re both so mean
And it’s my favorite scene
But the cruelty’s so predictable, it makes you sad on the stage
Though our love project has so much potential
But it’s like we weren’t made for this world
Though I wouldn’t really want to meet someone who was
Do I have to scream in your face?
I’ve been dodging lamps and vegetables
Throw it all in my face, I don’t care
Let’s just have some fun, let’s tear this shit apart
Let’s tear the fucking house apart
Let’s tear our fucking bodies apart
But let’s just have some fun
Somehow you’ve red-rovered the gestapo circling my heart
And nothing can defeat you
No death, no ugly world
You’ve lived so brightly
You’ve altered everything
I find myself searching for old selves
While speeding forward through the plate glass of maturing cells
I’ve played the unraveler, the parhelion
But even apocalypse is fleeting
There’s no death, no ugly world
Sometimes I wonder if you’re mythologizing me like I do you
We want our film to be beautiful, not realistic
Perceive me in the radiance of terror dreams
And you can betray me, but teach me something wonderful
Crown my head, crowd my head with your lilting effects
Project your fears on to me
I need to view them
See there’s nothing to them
I promise you there’s nothing to them
I’m so touched by your goodness
You make me feel so criminal
How do you keep it together?
I’m all, all unraveled
But you know, no matter where we are
We’re always touching by underground wires
I’ve explored you with the detachment of an analyst
But most nights we’ve raided the same kingdoms
And none of our secrets are physical now
Get the vinyl version. Comes with the 4 extra tracks that complete the album.
4. Beck – Sea Change (2002)
Like Hissing Fauna, this album was largely recorded while the artist was balls-deep in a break-up. Can you tell? Unfortunately, this album also marked the of sane-Beck as he went and signed up for Scientology with his new g-f shortly after this album. Regardless, Sea Change is a masterpiece of soul-searching songwriting. The first five tracks really set the tone of the album–’Lost Cause’ will dredge up those feelings no matter how far you try to bury them.
3. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free (2004)
Ok, I’m going out on a limb on this one, and while Mike Skinner’s lyrics tend to complain about dead cell phones as much as love lost, I still think this album makes for a good break-up album. I mean, the track ‘Dry Your Eyes’ is really the only song on the album that directly addresses the end of his relationship, but throughout the album we follow Mike on a downward spiral. Whether it be a broken television, a missing grand, or getting dumped, Skinner treats each event with equal weight, which provides a nice change of pace from the usual sad sappy break-up shit you might normally want to hear.
2. Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlantacism (2003)
I almost didn’t put this album on here because it’s so fucking cliche’ , but I really think it toes the line in the best way possible. While this album isn’t a break-up album in the sense that the rest of the albums on this list are (as far as I can tell, head songwriter Ben Gibbard wasn’t going through any break-ups himself during the writing and recording of the album), the lyrics are full of regret, lost opportunities, and above all–longing. The music only amplifies those sentiments and the result is a melancholic dose of nostalgic love. Ugh. The title track is about as epic as it gets.
1. The Wedding Present – Seamonsters (1991)
If it wasn’t for this album, I could have relegated this post to only one decade, but I have to give credit where credit is due. I have no idea why this album doesn’t get as much recognition as it should. Steve Albini produced this gem in 1991 and it sounds just as raw and powerful today. This is the album when David Gedge realized that the best way for him to deal with his screwed-up relationships was to turn up the god-damn amplifiers and start screaming. Gedge’s songwriting (and brutally honest sometimes-way-too-honest lyrics) matched with Albini’s production makes this album not only the #1 break-up album since 1991, but probably my favorite album of all-time. Here’s a little snippet from ‘Dalliance’:
You don’t care now that you’re gone
But you know how much I miss you?
It’s not fair after all you’ve done
That I’m so…
I still want to kiss you
Damn. While any Wedding Present album makes a good break-up album, Seamonsters compacts those complicated emotions into their most raw form, and then turns it up to 11.
Honorable mentions: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Guided by Voices – Isolation Drills, Sebadoh – Bakesale, Elliott Smith – Either/Or, PJ Harvey – Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Of All Time: Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks, Leonard Cohen – any, seriously, Big Star – #1 Record, feel free to add any I left out in the comments…
