Nexus Foundation for Today's Art (137 N. 2nd St.) is featuring our audio installation, entitled The B. Franklin Basement Tapes. The collaborative piece is part of the gallery's Benjamin Franklin: American Idol exhibit to commemorate Franklin's 300th birthday. The show runs through January 2006, & will offer website access to many of the works via podcast. The opening reception is December 2, 5-9pm. We welcome you to stop by & listen. You may see our street team on your way to Nexus, handing out fliers & hyping the project, thus participating in the show beyond the gallery walls. Hope to see you there.Frank Sherlock & CAConrad: The B. Franklin Basement Tapes
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Be cupid to world government. - “Pops” Lonnie Lynn
The B. Franklin Basement Tapes is a lo-fi response to the institutionalization of the Franklin myth. On the occasion of the 300th birthday of this visionary rebel & sexy nerd, much will be made of Franklin the statesman, the writer, the founder of services, and of course- the inventor. Rather than exalting the larger-than-life creator alongside his voluminous discoveries, we choose to take it back to the beginning. We channel Benjamin Franklin, DIY Idea Man. Mythology has a life of its own, establishing vertical relationships and hierarchical systems. But before mythology, there was/is the seed. Since we've yet to discover the Franklin Sun Recordings or Ben's Woodstock Years, The Basement Tapes document the kinds of beginnings that propelled Franklin to rock star status. Before the marble busts and the institutes, there were moments- as basic & genius as re-imaginations of the present.
The project can alternately be known as The Be Franklin Basement Tapes. In the spirit of the democratic thinker, these dream liberator exercise tapes can be worked out in basements all over the world. The poems are instructions to coronate our private parts. Make new musical instruments. Develop new ways of communicating subversions. Be a douser of flames. Make up lies & stoke revolts. This kind of urban planning & good-natured treason requires no degrees, and no academic pedigree. Franklin stopped schooling at age eleven and started studying margins, where all things are visible/possible. The Basement Tapes are not an homage to The Great Genius, but a recognition of the G-E-N-I-U-S that is not born & does not die. Today is your birthday. Be Franklin.
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