Snack quest two: life outside of the neon mines

Ian Bruner

For the online exhibition platform Off-Site™

August, 2021

This show is a narrative based work about life outside of the neon mines and is a continuation of the world built on prior shows with solo show, essenza club, and  parking garage( though no prior experience is needed). The exhibition is an attempt to bring into focus issues of white class collaborationism, the apathy of environmental degradation as a result of interconnections between white skin and economic systems of exploitation, and the poison bait of compliance/collaborationism. Each work and their corresponding tiles acts as a fragmented portion of the narrative.

 

It was one of those days in which you can’t get full and the rain won’t stop. Just as I was about to walk out the door to grab something to eat, the phone rang and made the kind of sound you hear as the Judas-calf hooves onto the platform, or the puckered lips kissing the horn announcing the birth of Jericho, or the intercourse of a distant car crash, or the walled in mechanics of the nuclear family, or the opening and closing of the register drawer.

 

On the other end would be the voice, it was alway just one voice, the same voice, just different each time, each time shifted and new. It was already late and I could feel my teeth moving in on the concave of my inner cheek, (with it’s strangely pitted and smooth surface, wet) circling in, a pack of wolves. I answered the phone and stated I could not help and hung up before a voice could push through. As soon as it was set down it rang again. I answered this time and listened or I tried to listen but my hunger was speaking too loud. I don’t know what I heard, but I listened.
In the end it played out as they tend to, someone missing or lost.

 

The voice was like a paper held out a car window in a rainstorm. No one would look for anyone out here, no eggmen, no private dick, not even a down and out used to be. People will go missing and in the mind’s eye of the ones left behind, the missing passes a barrier into the underworld. exiles of the exiled gone and forgotten. I followed the voice with a pen on paper tracing out a map as it was spoken. the map moved towards a vanishing point, a location where things fell away. The voice wanted to find someone and would pay well.

 

My stomach had dust in it and I needed food. I thought about a room so full of snacks the sun could not come through. I thought about a city made of snacks, the walls sticky and sweet.

—  Off-Site™

I cook with my eyes closed so I can feel warm Set four: full but sick (I ate the poisoned bait)
I cook with my eyes closed so I can feel warm Set four: full but sick (I ate the poisoned bait)
two shoes full of whatever is left (not much)
two shoes full of whatever is left (not much)
two shoes full of whatever is left (not much)
two shoes full of whatever is left (not much)
whoever smelt it dealt it (I denounce it to cloak me)
comfort
mask
I am nothing but double talk covered in a white skin (coward)
class consciousness (how to detach a shadow)
class consciousness (how to detach a shadow)
class consciousness (how to detach a shadow)
Nummy Worm Originals Lake worm stew
ash tray (or the ouroboros in khaki)
fast food (cheap)
fast food (cheap)
fast food (cheap)
fast food (cheap)
I never eat the lettuce i buy Set two: Mount Olympus
I never eat the lettuce i buy Set two: Mount Olympus
I never eat the lettuce i buy Set two: Mount Olympus
I never eat the lettuce i buy Set two: Mount Olympus
The yeezy -anthropocene 8500-slides (only 652.11 rat-coins🪙 🐀 ) Set three: white isolation
The yeezy -anthropocene 8500-slides (only 652.11 rat-coins🪙 🐀 ) Set three: white isolation
Veher ™ daily neon purifier (893 rat coins 🪙 🐀)
Veher ™ daily neon purifier (893 rat coins 🪙 🐀)
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus
nummy worm originals (caramelized mealworm) only 2.59 rat coins
Veher ™ daily neon purifier (893 rat coins 🪙 🐀)
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus
patternrecognition(onthehuntlol) every snack has an over coded message, a sugar cypher, hidden in charts and chemical lists, glossy appetitive images, fetishized cartoon totems, every corner store is a mount Olympus