A THOUSAND CUTS from LigoranoReese on Vimeo.

On June 18, 2011 as congress debated the fiscal budget LigoranoReese presented their third ice sculpture Morning In America in the garden of Jim Kempner Fine Art in New York City.

…A THOUSAND CUTS is the time-lapse video of the Middle Class’ disappearance. Over 60,000 people have seen it on the internet. Senator Bernie Sanders featured it on his Senate website and Rachel Maddow reported on it.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ 8-hour Senate floor filibuster against the Bush tax cuts punctuates the disintegration of the middle class sculpture, orchestrated to music by composer/violinist Michael Galasso.

The artists reinstalled the sculpture during the 2012 conventions in public parks in Tampa and Charlotte.

… politics, in addition to being the form that government takes, is also a form of theater (as if we’d ever forgotten). Artists making smart work about politics understand this — it’s why Ligorano/Reese’s massive melting ice sculpture of the words “middle class” is improbably effective, at least when recorded and paired with a rousing speech by Bernie Sanders: because the artists turn the showmanship of politics into critique.

– Jilian Steinhauer, Hyperallergic

Special Thanks

Dru Arstark, Anthony Caputo, Jim Kempner, Dan Walworth, Okamoto Studio, Postworks NY

The entire text of Senator Sanders speech is available as a book, published by Nation Books, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class.