Dread Scott & Jenny Polak – “Island of Outmoded and Failed Social Ideas”

Island of Outmoded and Failed Social Ideas as imagined by Dread Scott and Jenny Polak, One of fifteen islands fabricated by Greg Sholette based on ideas proposed by invited collaborators, Mixed media (paper, sand, plastic, wire, resin), 2012

Dear Greg,

Many who yearn for a better world think of their ideas on the margins of society and can‘t see beyond the current economic system. Rather than existing on the fringes, we‘ll take Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the rest of the world, thank you. In the future people will look back at the ideals and people that run contemporary society with curiosity and disbelief, much as we look back at societies that owned other human beings or in which people were sacrificed to appease non-existent gods. In the Island of Outmoded and Failed Social Ideas, people will get to see first hand the absurdity of capitalism and religion. It is a type of quarantine-island for today‘s harmful dominant ideas. If the defenders of the past wish to live on this island they may. Again, the rest of the world is ours.

- Dread Scott and Jenny Polak

Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. He first received national attention in 1989 when his art became the center of controversy over its use of the American flag. President Bush(I) declared his artwork “disgraceful.”

Jenny Polak is an artist making site-specific installation, sculpture, drawings and web projects focused on issues of hiding and migration, as well as the narratives of arrival and departure for undocumented and stateless people.

Back to Greg Sholette: Fifteen Islands for Robert Moses