BROOKE SINGER
Demolition Drugstore!
Date: Saturday 9.19
Start Time: 12:00pm
Location: Rm. 101, Barney Building
Workshop Requirements: Bring a product that you use frequently — like a lotion, toothpaste, detergent or surface cleaner. A laptop is also recommended but not required.
Do not come empty handed to Drugstore Demolition! Bring a product that you use frequently — like a lotion, toothpaste, detergent or surface cleaner. You know its brand name and how much it costs, but that is probably it.
First you must call your product by its real names. Learn to speak like a pro chemist and pronounce those multisyllabic chemical substances. Next, uncover your product’s genealogy and class. What is it really made of, where does it come from and how does it work? If you don’t like the results, onto the demolition.
Strip it down! Torch the useless junk! Reverse engineer your product so that it won’t weigh you down! Demolitions are guaranteed to save you money and lives. The skills you learn in this workshop can be used on all the bottles, tubes, cans and containers of stuff that sit on your shelves at home.
There are over 70,000 synthetic chemicals available on the market today that accumulate in our water, air, soil, food and bodies without much understanding by the public or even science. While the U.S. government regulates pharmaceuticals and pesticides, it does not bother with the industrial chemicals in your household products, which can be highly toxic and destructive to you and our shared ecosystem. Demolition Drugstore! invites you into the center of this complex and disturbing situation. Demo or die!
Brooke Singer is a media artist who lives in New York City. Her work blurs the borders between science, technology, politics and arts practices. She works across media to provide entry into important social issues that are often characterized as specialized or opaque to a general public. She is currently Assistant Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media.
