Pope.L: Black Factory was a big question. It was a show I took on the road. It was a truck with a crew of three. And we basically drove the truck around different parts of the country. There was a store inside the truck where you could buy Black Factory goods, and usually these goods were just simply relabeled supermarket products signed by me. As if my signature was very valuable. And it is!
We had an inflatable igloo that we put Black Factory objects in that were given to us because we were collecting from the different people we met. Because I had a question, and I'm sure you've wondered this yourself. “What is Blackness? Why do I feel this way about it? Why do I love it? Why do I feel a little bit distant about it? If I had to choose a black object what would it look like?”
So we would ask people, “Bring us your idea of a black object.” And people would bring us all kinds of things. One day, some guy brought us an ice cube. We couldn't keep it. He felt really bad about that, but people would bring you all kinds of things. The idea was to get people to think about class and gender and race and basically to create these conversations. And to never settle on anything. Of course, this was very frustrating for most of our audiences. It was kind of like, “Well, why are you doing this? Is there any answer? Answer it for me!” You know, and people walking away, stomping. A lot of stompers on the Black Factory tour.