Laurie McKenna
THE UNDESIRABLES
On July 12th, 1917 in Bisbee, Arizona the mining companies and the Sheriff armed over 2000 citizens and rounded up 1,196 striking miners and their supporters, marched them to the baseball park, loaded them onto cattle cars, and banished them to the desert of New Mexico. The strike was called by the IWW . The workers were accused of being subversives, unpatriotic, and a threat to public safety.
The Undesirables installation involved deep research, gathering and making physical objects, drawing, writing, publishing printed matter, video, projection, and live performance.
While working on the Undesirables Laurie became a collaborator in the film Bisbee ’17 (released in 2018) directed by Robert Greene.
Installed:
Premiere Central School Project Bisbee July 14, 2017
2018 - Cornelius Projects, San Pedro, Ca
2019 - Tohono Chul Park Gallery Tucson, Az.,
2019 - Arizona History Museum Tucson. Az.
Laurie's 4 smashed penny designs double as pamphlet cover art
The Penny
smallest denomination of legal tender, copper, wages, profits, mining
Penny Press
Smasher. replace bland and romantic messaging, smashing the ruling class with radical history. Transforming, Souvenirs.
Rubbing the 1917 Penny
One for each man deported resulting in a commemorative wall: laborious act, gravestone, rubbings revealing lost history
Flyers, handbills and pamphlets- the materials historically used by political, labor and human rights organizers. posted and distribute in the 2 years of research leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Deportation.
Pennant - “Think It Over” pennants signal what team you are on. Remove team-making. Souvenirs
Drawings and scripting: Transforming the photographic documentation of the Deportation in 1917. Capture key phrases and ephemeral declarations found through research. India ink, charcoal on paper
Video: Toys of the era used as a cast to play out historic vignettes. On the fly storytelling. Cinematography: Jared Alterman, Editing: Kellan Marvin
The Fabrication of a penny press machine
These vending machines are located at the sites of tourist attractions and smash pennies imprinting them with images commemorating historical moments, industries, or locations. I have appropriated this machine to challenge its mainstream intentions. It vends 4 distinct embossments of my design. Most machines create a souvenir that carries little meaning. My designs are counter to bland memorialization. The machine is like no other and was designed and built by Andrew Fairbank.
Collaborators
Pamphlets
Luc Sante
Luc Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium. His most recent book is The Other Paris. His other works include Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, and Kill All Your Darlings. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), an Infinity Award for Writing from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships. He has contributed to The New York Review of Books since 1981 and has written for many other publications. He is a visiting professor of writing and the history of photography at Bard College and lives in Ulster County, New York.
Brian Frye
Brian L. Frye is the Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. He teaches classes in civil procedure, intellectual property, copyright, and nonprofit organizations, as well as a seminar on law and popular culture. He received a J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 2005, an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997, and a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1995.
Professor Frye is also a filmmaker. He produced the documentary Our Nixon (2013), which was broadcast by CNN and opened theatrically nationwide.
Elizabeth Henson, PhD
Research Associate University of Arizona History Department.
Pamphlet: Los Flores Magon contributor to pamphlet covering radical Mexican leftists the Flores Magon brothers
Laurie McKenna
A pamphlet documenting Rosa McKay- pro-labor state legislator in 1917 for the Cochise County district. Her writing on Ras McKay has been published in The International Worker and Cochise County Historical Journal 2017
Music
Jon Leidecker contributed a loop for the Undesirables entitled Solace/Vexations. It is also used in the video vignettes and in performance.. Jon has been producing music under the name Wobbly since 1990, improvising with recordings to produce music which inherently questions the act of being captured. Recent performances deploy a battery of mobile devices driven by their built-in microphones, reacting spontaenously with error-prone yet intelligent variations on the notes and sounds they believe themselves to be hearing: a tightly-knit ensemble with inhuman reflexes, which the human performer influences more than controls. Currently touring and recording with Negativland and the Thurston Moore Ensemble, other live and studio collaborators include Zeena Parkins, Dieter Moebius & Tim Story, People Like Us, Matmos, Laetitia Sonami, Fred Frith's Gravity Band, Thomas Dimuzio, Porest, Tim Perkis & Xopher Davidson, Tania Chen, Sue C., The Freddy McGuire Show, Sagan and the Chopping Channel. Radio Web MACBA commissioned a nine hour podcast overview on the history of recorded collage music entitled 'Variations' in 2008, and related lectures have been presented at Mills, Oxford, Peabody, & Stanford. In 2015 he inherited Negativland's long-running Over The Edge radio program, broadcasting from KPFA FM in Berkeley.
Graphic Art Support
Bridget Shanahan Bridget is a dedicated and talented artist, co-founder of Dog Cat Mouse media design company in Bisbee. Bridget cleaned up penny press artwork for the die maker and did the layout of the pamphlets.
Penny Smasher engineer and fabricator
Andrew Fairbank
Andrew lives in New Hampshire and designed and fabricated the Penny Smasher long distance. Andrew is a side car motorcycle racer. He built two sidecar motorcycles for Matthew Barney's Cremaster 4 Guggenheim exhibition. The Penny machine incorporates a length of railroad track donated by local mining company.