The Nation is Bankrupt
Before The Nation Went Bankrupt: Introduction, Video, 2017, 4:47
Origins
The project began as a street performance at Occupy Wall Street in 2011, where I played a disillusioned banker wandering through the protest, eager for a mea culpa: his St. Paul on the road to Damascus epiphany.This evolved into a seminar on desire conducted from the back of a limousine and while walking through the symbolic neoclassical architecture of Wall Street. Performed at Conflux 2012.
The first letter I wrote in Dimon’s voice was addressed to his wife, Judy, explaining his love for her through the Black-Scholes options pricing model. I printed it, crumpled it up and put it into a frame. Here I am performing the letter, along with a Greek chorus at Spattered Columns, New York in June 2012.
Why Dimon? Perhaps it was his reputation as “America’s favorite banker,” or his willingness to become the public face of a vilified industry. More than anything, I think it was his combination of mendacity and vanity.
Other letters grew out of these drawings: the CEOs of the major banks playing out high school archetypes around the big table at the Fed while deciding the economic future of the world.
Performances
From 2012 to 2017, the project grew modularly, with new letters added to the live multimedia performance.Before The Nation Went Bankrupt: Letter to Daughter Julia (performance excerpt from Dixon PL 2015), video, 2015, 4:06
-> Full performance: Before The Nation Went Bankrupt, Dixon Place, New York, 2015
Videos
In 2017, I assembled the first major section of the project into the video Before The Nation Went Bankrupt, focused on the September 2008 weekend bankers spent at the Federal Reserve.Before The Nation Went Bankrupt: Letter to Lover #1, Video, 2017, 4:42
Before The Nation Went Bankrupt: Letter to Lover #2, Video, 2017, 5:01
Before The Nation Went Bankrupt: Letter to William Winters, Video, 2017, 5:10
-> Full video: Before The Nation Went Bankrupt
Photo Spread
In 2014, Rose Marie Cromwell and I created a 14-page spread for the Vice Photo Issue, extending The Nation Is Bankrupt through a series of staged photographs.Drift
In 2021, I adapted the project into a geotagged audio walking tour of Wall Street. The piece was included in (RE)VERB, an audio augmented reality zine for spatially conceived literary projects and was hosted on Gesso.
Play: BTNWB: Wall Street
While & After The Nation Went Bankrupt
As long as Jamie Dimon remains CEO of JPMorgan Chase, The Nation Is Bankrupt continues. The most recent letter was written to Judy after the Dimons became billionaires.While The Nation Went Bankrupt: Letter to Judy, Video, 2021, 4:00
As satire is absorbed by the powerful, the project has taken on a stranger, more abstract form. New directions turn inward, toward the body and toward abstraction, mirroring finance’s widening separation from everyday experience.