Benjamin White: Impossible Machines
curated by Terri Saulin Frock
January 3 – January 26, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, January 3, 2014, 6pm -10pm

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PHILADELPHIA, PA-
Tiger Strikes Asteroid wishes you all a joyful New Year. Please celebrate with us as we present our January exhibition Benjamin White: Impossible Machines, curated by Terri Saulin Frock. Please join us for the Opening Reception Friday, January 3, 2014, 6-10pm

From the desk of Mr. Benjamin White:

What works? Take any invention, any system and you will find some kind of waste, inefficiency or unintended consequence. In some cases the consequence may far outweigh the contribution the invention has supplied. Oil. Nukes. Plastics. CO2. Fukushima. Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If humans do away with themselves, basically going out in “a blaze of glory” (read: a miserable, dreadful, painful, slow end) all the inventions, all the art, all the ideas – over all of humanity - will cease to be within the collective memory of human beings. Already The Holocaust, clinically perfected and precisely recorded by the Nazi war machine is becoming a distant, some would say “unsubstantiated,” memory, subject to the vagaries of nationalism, denial and falsehoods. “The truth will out.” Shakespeare says. But how does it emerge from the cacophony of misinformation, and how long does it take? The military industrial complex, health insurance, drinking water, the whole notion of financial markets are, I think, oddly, based on a strange relationship to God! An impossible machine based on faith (in the integrity of the institution); guilt (that we have not done enough to pay our own way); debt (for your kindness or your generosity); vengeance (sometimes it is ok to hit back); forgiveness (it is never ok to hit back): supporting and codifying our antic behavior as we need. And below the ethical/moral onionskin, our genetics, our predisposition for health, cancer, mayhem, order…in our own way we are also impossible machines.

Benjamin White is 51: Old enough to be old to the young and young enough to be young to the old. He has seen a fair amount of mistakes and crap-olla, corruption, dictators, dictatorial destruction, and the rise of corrupt, but “better than” systems. He is amazed that so many things work - thanks usually to a tendency among human beings to make kind decisions - and that more things don’t go dreadfully wrong - usually due to someone suggesting that we stop doing such and such and start doing something else that is a little better. An impossible machine is one that will never work. If it works, it will never do anything.