Smoothie
By Jenn Tyburczy and Mike Werckle

We purposely dated the project by throwing paint, grass, glue, newspaper, dust from the vacuum cleaner among other crud to give a more authentically 1971 Uncle Phil's basement look.

Also included as the main body of this project were the “actual” body parts removed from Ken and Barbie, which now inhabited the dated jars of the piss-colored sediment and sludge in which they sat in front of the poster board. We crowned the project with a “2nd place” ribbon which our fabricated “Joey S.” won in 1971.

During the presentation, the class gathered around the project: Adam read the script while others crouched on the ground and/or reached for the jars to examine their contents with mixed joy and disgust. The room had transformed into a showcase of Barbie and Ken's life as “smoothies”, and for a moment, “truth” was suspended and we stepped into Uncle Phil's basement and came out with a relic that, 23 years ago, had successfully shocked and awed a sixth grader and his peers.

We feel this connects to the nightmare of normalcy as we were able to visually and realistically draw an invisible line between Joey S.'s imaginary audience and the audience lounging around the project in our pomogoth class. On their faces, gestures and attitudes was the mapping on of similar reactions by that imaginary audience. The fact that “smoothies” won second place for Joey S. represents the societal fear that “abnormalcy” will someday be rewarded and applauded, that it will indeed take over all us “normal” folks that are just trying to survive in the face of so many freaks. For Joey S. and our pomogoth class, however, we did applaud and we did reward that very abnormalcy, an abnormalcy that we all embody, that we all possess inside and outside and that we need to learn to embrace and cherish as we break down the binary oppositions that shackle us.

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