Blue Magic...
Posted on 06/23/2010 1:49:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The empty glassine packets can be found in Manhattan, Brooklyn and beyond, scattered on streets and sidewalks with only obscure slogans or graphic images to suggest their former use. At one time they contained heroin and the markings stamped on the packets were meant to differentiate strains of varying purity or provenance.
To some they are crime evidence. Addicts may see them mainly as a vehicle to fulfill a dangerous urge. For a group of artists who have been collecting them they are cultural artifacts that are equally unsettling and compelling.
On Wednesday a weeklong show called “Heroin Stamp Project” organized by seven members of the Social Art Collective is scheduled to open at the White Box Gallery on Broome Street on the Lower East Side. The show, which will include 150 packets picked off city streets, as well as 12 blown-up prints made from them, is meant to examine the intersection of advertising and addiction and provoke questions about how society addresses dependence and disease.
The origins of the show can be traced to 2001, when Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, a sociologist researching the relationship between H.I.V. and drug use, first glimpsed the packets in an empty building in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, where addicts would shoot up. Immediately, he said, he was struck by the fact that the images on the glassine envelopes served as advertisements.
“This was the marketing of heroin,” he said on a recent evening as he stood on a corner in Bushwick. “Even something so forbidden, so demonized, can be branded.”
He began collecting the packets and about six years ago he showed them to a friend, Liza Vadnai, who was taken by their combination of menace and fragile beauty. Joined by others, they continued gathering packets with the aim of organizing an exhibition.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That’s a lot of effort (putting together a show, etc.) to back up explaining to a cop that you were just “collecting” them, they aren’t really yours... < /sarc >
wonder if any NEA grants went to this.
I remember in The Wire the hoppers calling out, “got that WMD”. Not sure why anyone would want to buy that, but a pretty accurate product name.
It took 6 years to find 150 empty packets?
Herion’s nothing compared to the “branded” drugs in the form of prescription pain medication.
Blue Magic...
Think there’s enough residue in 150 packets for a bust?
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