Standing Before A Work Making Our Own Connections
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Years later, or maybe just days, someone finds the warehouse empty except for one massive assemblage and a child who may or may not be Maybe, teaching visitors how to see both what's there and what's beneath—discovering that the real work was never the objects but the architecture of connection they embodied.
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"These are the connections we can see," the child said, pointing. Maybe it was Maybe. Maybe it was someone new. Impossible to tell with all the paint. Layers like sediment. Like years. Like the way a city builds on its own bones.
The warehouse had been cleared out. Or filled completely. Hard to say. Everything that had been separate was now one thing. Or one thing that was clearly many things. Or—
"The wire wrapping around a piece of wood," the child continued, touching each point. "From the Radio Shack at Randall Park Mall. Copper worth $3.40 a pound as scrap. The glue holding fragments together—Elmer's, expired, from Jefferson Elementary before it closed. The knot that joins two cords—one's a iPhone charger, $19.99 at CVS, the other's from a noose someone didn't use, found hanging in Edgewater Park."
A group of visitors stood before it. The assemblage was massive. Floor to ceiling. Twenty feet wide. Every story that had been pinned to trees. Every piece of garbage transformed. Every knot Vessel had tied with her arthritis hands. Every loop walked by broken bodies. Every ellipsis left hanging.
"But beneath surfaces lies the memories they carry," the child said, and somehow when she said it, you could feel them. The father watching bubbles with Pearl—Troy, selling insurance now, still dreaming equations. Marlène bouncing back—teaching kids violin for cash under the table, $30 an hour, no receipts. The bankruptcy court becoming dance floor—Marie Debris Johnson, still dancing, still refusing endpoints.
"The links that made us see these disparate objects as belonging together."
Someone in the group, an art critic probably—MFA from Oberlin, $97,000 in debt, reviewing for websites that paid in "exposure"—started taking notes: "I see a violin made of garbage, an inflatable dinosaur deflated, court documents origami-folded into wings—"
"Through compression," the child interrupted. "By removing all connecting tissue—"
She pointed to gaps in the assemblage. Deliberate absences. Places where things should connect but didn't. The space between the T-Rex and the violin—$47.99 and priceless. The gap between painted concrete and museum labels. The void where Maybe's seventh foster home should have been.
"We created findings. Fragments that visitors and receivers must actively work to connect."
"So we have to—" someone started. A teacher. Recently fired. Budget cuts.
"Build the bridges yourself," the child confirmed. "With your looking. Your remembering. Your connecting."
An older woman emerged from behind the assemblage. Was it Chanson? Vessel? One of the elderly unison women? Time was weird here. The warehouse existed in the gap between demolished and not-yet. Had existed there for seven years now.
"Things that exist," she said, pointing to knots that interrupted the flow. "That must be acknowledged. Disruptions to smooth surfaces."
"Doing the work of better understanding," the child added.
"Participating in the meaning," the visitors realized, starting to move around the piece, seeing how it changed from every angle. How poverty looked different from the left. How revolution shifted when you stood to the right. How the center was empty—a Maybe-sized hole where someone could stand, become part of it.
"Most people understand tradition as keeping things the same," the older woman explained. "Freezing them in time."
"But we're proposing tradition as circulation," the child continued, walking her own loop around the assemblage. Paint on her feet—rainbow soles, twelve dollars worth of mistinted house paint. "Like blood through a body. Continuously moving. Picking up oxygen. Picking up waste. Both necessary."
"Picking up new nurturing meanings as it flows."
Someone touched the assemblage. At that point, the whole thing shifted slightly. Not falling. Just rearranging. Showing it was alive, still changing, held together by tension not glue.
"Each circuit adds rather than preserves," the child said. "Our assemblages can honor the past while transforming it."
She showed them a piece—definitely a cafeteria tray from the Contemporary Museum, the one where Wrack had worked for $11.50 an hour. Covered in ashes from the mausoleum—someone's grandmother, $3,000 to cremate, scattered by strangers who needed ritual. Wrapped in wire from Peal's teachings. Painted with Maybe's glow paint that somehow still glowed, three years later, defying the chemistry of dollar store materials.
"How nonperishable garbage can maintain its history while gaining new significance."
A man started crying. "My daughter was at that mall. She became someone there. In that collective."
"By the time we recognize a moment," the woman said gently, "it's already gone."
"This creates an impossible urgency," the child added. "How do you preserve something that won't hold still?"
She gestured at the assemblage, which was definitely different than it had been five minutes ago. Or was it the light? November light through broken windows. Or was it the looking? The way attention changes what it touches.
"These assemblages answer this by preserving transformations and processes of becoming."
"Each iteration doesn't replace but refines," the woman said, showing layers—you could see every version underneath. Like geology. Like trauma. Like the way a city builds on its own ruins. "Like repeatedly filtering water until only the purest essence remains."
"But all the filters are still there," the child added. "Visible. Part of it. The coffee filter from the bankruptcy court. The water filter from Flint. The air filter from the museum's climate control. All here."
The art critic had stopped writing. Was just looking now. "It has two existences."
"The visible object or what's on the surface," the child confirmed.
"And the invisible structure of relationships or what's beneath," the woman added.
"The real value is the architecture of connection it embodies."
They gave everyone time. An hour. A day. Who knew? Time moved different around assemblages that contained years of minimum wage work, centuries of accumulated poverty, decades of resistance.
Then the child asked: "Describe everything visible on the surface."
People called out:
"A photograph of someone crying—"
"Rope forming letters—WE ARE DOING SOMETHING—"
"Concrete chunks with flowers—dandelions, crabgrass, survivor species—"
"Inflatable material twisted into—"
"Papers that say Chapter 7, Chapter 13—"
"Paint, so much paint—"
"A violin? Made of trash?"
"Mannequin parts arranged like they're dancing—"
"A phone screen cracked in constellation patterns—"
"Now," the woman said, "document what memories guided the profound choices that these objects belonged together."
Silence. Then:
"Someone learned to fall here. Branch Holloway. Knee still clicks."
"Someone learned to rise. Marlène. Still bouncing."
"A child taught adults to play. Maybe. Still in foster care."
"Adults taught a child to survive. Everyone. Still teaching."
"People who had nothing made everything."
"People who had everything realized it was nothing."
"Someone discovered tradition is circulation. Vessel. Hands like roots now."
"Someone learned that breaking is just another form of making."
The child smiled. Pulled out a torn book—maybe documentation, maybe poetry, maybe both. Pages from the city archive. Chanson's handwriting.
"For our practice," she read, "every text has surface reading or what the words literally say—"
She showed them a page. It just said: "We are doing something."
"And other reading or how the insights connect beneath—"
The same page, but now they saw it different. Saw the bankruptcy court. The mall. The museum. The warehouse. All of it in those four words. The entire economy of survival.
"Ellipses and fragments create gaps to bridge."
She showed them gaps in the assemblage. In the text. In everything. The spaces where foster kids fell through. Where minimum wage workers disappeared. Where art separated from life.
"Enabling readers to construct their own connection."
The visitors stood there. Looking. Connecting. Building bridges across gaps. Seeing surface—materials worth less than one month's rent. Feeling beneath—connections worth more than the entire city budget. The assemblage was changing. Or they were changing. Or both. Always both.
Someone new walked in. "What is this?"
The child looked at them. At the assemblage. At all of them standing before a work, making their own connections. Thought of Maybe, wherever she was now—aged out of foster care, probably. Still painting, definitely. Still saying "we are so glad to land" even when the landing was nowhere safe.
"This is..." she started, then stopped. Three fingers held up. Ellipses.
The space for them to build their own bridge to meaning.
The older woman added, barely audible: "Everything that escaped. And everything that didn't. And the space between."
The newcomer approached the assemblage. Touched it. Something shifted. A new connection formed. The work continued.
Would always continue.
The child sat down, cross-legged, before the assemblage. Started painting the air. Nothing there but somehow everyone could see it. The invisible architecture of connection. The beneath that was also surface. The gaps that were also bridges. The $7.25 an hour that was also revolution. The foster care that was also family. The bankruptcy that was also freedom. The garbage that was also gospel.
"These are the connections we can see..." she began again, for the next group, or the same group seeing new, or herself, or the assemblage, or all of us, standing before works, making our own connections, forever...
The warehouse would be demolished tomorrow. Or had been demolished yesterday. Or existed in the permanent gap between. The assemblage would be moved to the Contemporary Museum. Or burned by the city. Or transformed into something else. Or all three. Or none.
But right now, in this moment that was all moments, people stood before a work made of garbage and grace, poverty and power, seeing both what was there—materials worth nothing—and what was beneath—connections worth everything.
Making our own connections.
Always.
Despite.
Because.
Through.
...
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We are all standing before works making our own connections, seeing the visible wire and glue while feeling the invisible memories beneath, discovering that tradition is circulation not preservation, that each iteration adds rather than replaces, that assemblages have dual existence—surface and structure—and that the real work was never the objects but the gaps between them, the bridges we build with our looking, the architecture of connection that exists both on and beneath every surface, teaching us that meaning emerges not from what's complete but from what escapes, what continues, what keeps asking us to connect across the distances between $7.25 an hour and human dignity, between foster care and family, between bankruptcy and beginning again, between the warehouse that's always about to be demolished and the connections that can't be destroyed...
