Hopelessness Freezes Time
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2011
Hardcover, 100 pages, 25 SwF

Produced on the occasion of Edgar Arceneaux's exhibition at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Kunstmuseum Basel, Hopelessness Freezes Time: 1967 Detroit Riots, Detroit Techno and Michael Heizer's Dragged Mass presents artworks, research, and writing from the artist’s collaboration with art historian Julian Myers (Curatorial Practice faculty).

Both exhibition and book emerged from their interdisciplinary collaboration, Mirror Travel in the Motor City. Drawing on the art and culture of Detroit in the long aftermath of the thwarted urban resistance of 1967, the book connects historical events, guerrilla monuments, earthworks, iconoclasm, and the mythic-political techno of Underground Resistance and Drexciya to create a "counter-allegorical field from which new work might be realized -- work that might unsettle the past that historicist allegory attempts to resolve."

Embracing this possibility, Kimberly Varella's innovative design presents an object complete yet provisional, singular but fragmentary.