Exorcism of the Spirit of Enterprise on Columbus Day Weekend
A project of Best Praxis (Eugenia Manwelyan, Tal Beery), Panagiotis Alexiou, and Julianne Skinner
Saturday, October 10, 9-5pm
Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial Sculpture Garden, Philadelphia, PA
We’ve been very productive lately. Haven’t you? Haven’t you been plugging away at your many many projects. Working, building, growing, expanding … we’ve all been very enterprising, as if possessed by a spirit that pushes us ever onward, ever forward to work ever harder, to produce ever more. Where would we even be without this ideological creature inhabiting our bodies, minds, and dreams? Who are we if not do-ers, makers, movers and shakers? Isn’t the drive for better faster stronger bigger a good thing? a natural thing? an “us” thing?
While we are great admirers of realizing one's dreams, making it happen, getting shit done, we’re afraid that all this extraction, production, expansion has left us, and our little floating green-blue space rock, depleted. And in order that we may grow, evolve, survive, and thrive - it’s time to free ourselves of this spirit’s grasp.
“The results of civilization were surprising: our lives became more secure but less free, and we worked a lot harder.” - Eduardo Galeano
The almighty Spirit of Enterprise has outstayed its welcome. Let us join forces and exorcise the demon!
Through play, invocations, explorations, dialogues, defiant rest, and minor transgressions, we will identify the places in which the spirit resides, battle so that we may be released from its clutches, and heal from the marks it has left. We may succeed, we may fail, and we can’t guarantee that we won't be turned into mind-controlled drone workers before lunch, but we guarantee a deepening of the connections to those histories, powers, and forces that drive us.
Welcome, dear possessed, to the “Spirit of Enterprise” Sculpture Garden, next to the beautiful Schuylkill river - a place where the history of the Nation is portrayed and the great Spirit of Enterprise haunts and thrusts its powers on man and land alike. The spirit resides here, exposed, for all to worship and admire. This shrine to the Spirit of Enterprise tells the story of a hard-working labourer, a farmer at plough, a preacher at pulpit, a poet with pen in hand, a scientist weighing the stars - all silently reciting the words that the spirit whispers persistently directly into their muscles: “Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with fearless and eager eyes, as vigorous as a young man to run a race.” And run they do, for race they must. Joined by the light-skinned immigrants by choice and dark-skinned immigrants by kidnap, the Spirit of Enterprise conquered all other spirits that once roamed these vast lands and manifested its destiny at the center of the nation, and in the hearts of all who inhabit it.
It’s time to stop racing, and start walking together.
It’s time to stop building, and start inhabiting.
It’s time to stop growing, and start cultivating.
It’s time to stop this spirit in its tracks, and ends its monopolistic reign.