Phil America: Failure of the American Dream
January 31 – May 8, 2016
CAM Raleigh
409 W Martin Street, Raleigh, NC 27603
Phil America will live in the installation at CAM Raleigh and share his experiences with museum visitors from May 4 through May 8.
Failure of the American Dream is an exhibition featuring video and installation created in 2014 by Phil America while he lived in The Jungle, the nickname for a tent city near Silicon Valley in San Jose, California. The Jungle was the largest encampment of homeless people in the United States at the time. The exhibition explores the realities of poverty in the United States that are frequently sensationalized or ignored in Western culture while sharing the humanity of an everyday epidemic.
The popularly understood ideology of “The American Dream” assumes that citizens have the opportunity to attain a level of financial and social status that will make them happy. Homelessness and the tent city are the anti-dream. People living in the tents have created housing and a community on their own terms, outside the laws of society. Their dream has been temporarily or permanently abandoned to focus on the immediate need for safety, food and shelter. Each person in The Jungle was promised this dream by the their parents, their teachers, and has been denied; now their main focus is survival.
Failure of the American Dream is an examination of a Third World within the United States and a portrait of the many people left struggling each day. The video is accompanied by an installation that includes the tent and belongings Phil America used to survive during his month in The Jungle.
Phil America is a performative character, an extension of the artist and his ideas. He describes himself as a “performative character” to help people understand that this work is time based performance art as well as artwork that is documented and exhibited. Highlighting the act of living in The Jungle is as important to him as showing the tent later. Being a performative character helps people focus on the performance aspect of the work and reminds them that they can put themselves in the place of the character played by Phil America.
http://camraleigh.org/2015/12/phil-america-failure-of-the-american-dream/
