Eternal Summer #5 - The Fair

Hypnotist and Subject, Minnesota State Fair

Our State Fair is theater. Not exactly high-brow, but thoroughly scripted, rehearsed and acted. We, the people of Minnesota, are the actors. User generated content? It has always been full of it, years before the internet, and in thousands of weird and wonderful ways. It is the official end of summer, at least in Minnesota. Ending on Labor Day (traditionally the day before school starts) it is a punctuation mark; a full stop on the sentence of the seasons. Its popularity grows each year. It exists in a world of its own, beyond parody and irony, beyond reductionism and analysis.



Congress of Oddities, 1976

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself"
~ Walt Whitman