Get Your Kicks...At Signal 66
McVeigh's deathbed occupies center stage of Signal 66's spacious gallery. You and other witnesses to the execution peer through large windows around this "stage." At the foot of his bed, a teleprompter scrolls McVeigh's polemical ravings and a clinical description of death by lethal injection. Faces of the executors and the executed are projected on both the pristine white sheets and a huge portrait of a snarling McVeigh.
Surrounding the deathroom, banks of video monitors spew a barrage of media noise. Video artists Eric Gravley and Jeremy Young interweave news anchors and talk show hosts as they breathlessly comment on the impending execution with images of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and Clint Eastwood's Hang 'em High.
Artist's Note: In real life, the Federal Bureau of Prisons recently rejected McVeigh's request to be executed publicly—in what would certainly be the pinnacle of reality-based entertainment on television. Discussion of a true public McVeigh execution continued last week on CNN's "The Point," as Greta Van Susteren brought the debate to a victim's grandmother, McVeigh's lawyer, and a funeral director in favor of a broadcast."
My friends and I bought $2 Coronas at the bar and began wandering through the gallery. There weren't nearly as many people there as I thought there might be, and the crowd was a mixture of people like us—interested, but also there to scope out cute members of the opposite...or same...sex—and true art aficionados who were more interested in the exhibit than the onlookers.
The main gallery leads to a small room with some additional pieces and an upstairs hallway filled with separate pieces from the gallery's collection. In the back of the hall, we encountered Mr. Pompous Art Guy, who was examining a large painting of Mickey Mouse perched over what appeared to be Armaggedon images, and he was explaining his view of the painting to anyone who cared to listen.
"I see Mickey Mouse as an image of capitalism," he said. "That's what he symbolizes."
Then he gestured to an arm that reached from the lower half of the painting toward Mickey. The arm probably took up a good third of the canvas. "And this arm, which I have just noticed, this arm definitely represents labor."
One of the true art aficionados stepped back from the painting, stroked his chin, and said, "That's interesting. You see Mickey Mouse as representing capitalism. I see him, in this painting, as representing Disney. And cartooning."
At this point, my friends
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