BALM just moved! We will be re-opening on December 17th at 517 N. Springer in Carbondale, Illinois. E-mail locust.review@gmail.com or call 618-713-8132 more information.

An Irrealist Mutual Aid Project

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Ring the Dollar Stores
Ring the Dollar Stores

BALM’s Irrealist Mutual Aid Project (2023-ongoing)

Ring the Dollar Stores
Ring the Dollar Stores

BALM’s Irrealist Mutual Aid Project (2023-ongoing)

Ring the Dollar Stores (Handout)
Ring the Dollar Stores (Handout)

BALM’s Irrealist Mutual Aid Project (2023-ongoing). Handout from the “May Day Solidarity Potluck + Starbucks Workers Fundraiser + Mutual Aid Dinner” held at BALM.

Red-E Bears
Red-E Bears

Discount teddy bears, felt, pantyhose (2023).

Soup for Your Family
Soup for Your Family

Soup, pantyhose, coat tree (2023).

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Grand Saline Piney Woods Encampment, part 1
Grand Saline Piney Woods Encampment, part 1
So ILL Nightmare
So ILL Nightmare
'Merica? We Don't Get None of That Out Here in These Parts
'Merica? We Don't Get None of That Out Here in These Parts
Groomer Saves the Children
Groomer Saves the Children
Arrhythm Nation
Arrhythm Nation
No Prime Delivery on Big Rock Candy Mountain
No Prime Delivery on Big Rock Candy Mountain
Born Again Labor Tract #2
Born Again Labor Tract #2
Room Phant Killz Us!!!
Room Phant Killz Us!!!
Don't Turtle During Hyphal Fusion
Don't Turtle During Hyphal Fusion
Cat Without A Grin
Cat Without A Grin
Snek Rallies the Oil Snakes, while Aelita Beheads Elon Musk, and Possum Sings Against the Rain
Snek Rallies the Oil Snakes, while Aelita Beheads Elon Musk, and Possum Sings Against the Rain
Mike the UPS Guy Gave Birth to the New People But Now the Moon is a Cartoon Bomb
Mike the UPS Guy Gave Birth to the New People But Now the Moon is a Cartoon Bomb
Vivarium Annex
Vivarium Annex
The Space Comrades Aren't Coming so Warm Yourself by the Riot Fire
The Space Comrades Aren't Coming so Warm Yourself by the Riot Fire
Cyborg Painting #1: Every time a Cyborg Heart Beats an Essential Worker Loses Hero Pay
Cyborg Painting #1: Every time a Cyborg Heart Beats an Essential Worker Loses Hero Pay
Day 29 in the Poor Room
Day 29 in the Poor Room
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Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project
Featured
Wendy's, Burger King, and Hardee's Parking Lots' Wives
Wendy's, Burger King, and Hardee's Parking Lots' Wives

Salt packets, glue, pedestals (2021-2022).

Women of the 19th of September
Women of the 19th of September

“Women of the 19th of September,” sewing machine, salvaged pedestal, bandages, stage blood, acrylic, cotton and ash (2022).

Burger King Parking Lot's Wife
Burger King Parking Lot's Wife

“Burger King Parking Lot’s Wife” - salvaged pedestal, salt packets, glue (2021)

Monuments for Essential Workers
Monuments for Essential Workers

Monuments for Essential Workers - traffic cones, hard hats, cheese cloth, gauze, plaster, and work/drop lights (April 2021).

It's Always October 2nd Someplace
It's Always October 2nd Someplace

It's Always October 2nd Someplace - chairs and desks, books, fake-blood (April 2021)

Apocalypse Rink
Apocalypse Rink

Apocalypse Rink - door, basketball hoop, paint, ink, cotton and ash, office mat, Soviet toy rocket, stool (March 2021).

Cicero's Pawns Pwn Cicero
Cicero's Pawns Pwn Cicero

Cicero's Pawns Pwn Cicero - pawns, gaming table, plaster, drawings, vellum and mixed-media (March 2021).

Opossum Box
Opossum Box

Opossum Box - The first artifact of the Born Again Labor Museum (BALM) was a reliquary containing the bones of an opossum infused with the spirit of an unknown victim of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire; victim 147. The bones were stolen during a 1968 BALM exhibition in Toledo, Ohio. They were recovered in September 2020 by Tish Markley and Adam Turl. Upon receiving the bones, Markley and Turl found they were covered in writing. Moreover, the bones kept screaming in pain. After several healing techniques were tried -- such as coupling the bones with wounded tools or post-industrial healing debris, or wrapping them in poetry -- they found that suspending the bones in a coal miner’s canary cage helped alleviate their suffering.

Plague Angel/Toilet Paper with Wings
Plague Angel/Toilet Paper with Wings

Toilet paper, costume wings, thread (2020).

Class Stelae
Class Stelae

Memorial defense for passed comrades. Nails, epoxy, acrylic, collage, mixed media on wood boards.

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Choose 2 Give Up Every Day
Choose 2 Give Up Every Day
There is Nothing Wrong with Time Travel
There is Nothing Wrong with Time Travel
Subsidize Soy Consumption
Subsidize Soy Consumption
Expropriate the Slumlords
Expropriate the Slumlords

Locust Review issue six arrives at BALM (October, 2021).

In the late summer (2020) the Born Again Labor Museum began recreating alien messages and drawings in bottles found washed up on the Earth’s exosphere. As the letters were mostly from planets in existential crisis we named these “Fermi Bottles” after the Fermi Paradox.

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Fermi Bottle #3
Fermi Bottle #3

Fermi Bottle #3: A letter from a planet whose residents are permanently on fire.

Fermi Bottle #4
Fermi Bottle #4

Fermi Bottle #4: A letter from a planet where no one has gotten a good night’s sleep in 73 years.

Fermi Bottle #2
Fermi Bottle #2

Fermi Bottle #2: A letter from the Smells Like Fish Island on a planet destroyed by atomic weapons after a workers' revolution.

Fermi Bottle #1
Fermi Bottle #1

Fermi Bottle #1: A letter from a nurse named Porpa Moonshine on the planet Prosperity.

l5c-socialresurrectiontaskprints-inverted-1.jpg
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Social Resurrection Task-Prints
Social Resurrection Task-Prints

“Social Resurrection Task Prints.” Digital photographic prints with paint, cotton and ash hanging on clotheslines, by Tish Turl and Adam Turl (2021).

Social Resurrection Task-Prints
Social Resurrection Task-Prints

“Social Resurrection Task Prints.” Digital photographic prints with paint, cotton and ash hanging on clotheslines, by Tish Turl and Adam Turl (2021).

Social Resurrection Task-Prints
Social Resurrection Task-Prints

“Social Resurrection Task Prints.” Digital photographic prints with paint, cotton and ash hanging on clotheslines, by Tish Turl and Adam Turl (2021).

Featured
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois (2021).

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois (2021).

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois (2021).

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois (2021).

Big Muddy Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois.

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois.

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois.

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois.

Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project

Irrealist Psycho-Geography in southern Illinois.

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Gib (from Space Goths)
Gib (from Space Goths)

Gib — based on a character from the Tish Markley short story, “Space Goths.”

Pirate Jenny
Pirate Jenny

Puppet based on the Brecht poem, “Jenny the Pirate”

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Wounded Bee Smoker
Wounded Bee Smoker

Wounded Tool 32593-T – Bee Smoker (bandaged in a poem by Alexander Billet) - When the last bees died, the bee smoker filled itself with crystal meth in a failed suicide attempt. Unchecked it will float around the countryside getting people high, but only if they don’t want to be, and especially if they suffer from anxiety disorder. The Wounded Tool Library is attempting to teach the bee smoker to only get people high with their consent. Until then its pain is being managed with poem bandaging.

Wounded Box Grater
Wounded Box Grater

Wounded Tool 326501-T - Box Grater (wrapped in a poem by Michael Linaweaver): Abandoned after the mass marketing of pre-packaged shredded cheese, this box grater fell into a deep depression. Unchecked it will deprive middle-class white people of the shredded cheese they 'need' for their 'fajitas,' and will turn grated food material into aluminum filings. It has been wrapped in the poem '2046' to ameliorate its psychological pain. (July 2020)

Wounded Harmonicas
Wounded Harmonicas

Wounded Tool 32590-92-T - Harmonicas - When the last human being who remembered Leadbelly’s “We Shall Be Free” died, this group of harmonicas went into a sort of psychosis. They have been put into suspended animation in Whiskey in hopes that a cure can be found. If exposed to the air they will begin a rendition of “Gloomy Sunday,” causing mass suicides within a 3.5 mile radius.

Wounded Sickles
Wounded Sickles

Wounded Tool 32596-8-T - Sickles (Wounded Tool Library, Born Again Labor Museum): "Like most sickles, these artifacts grew tired of harvesting crops and cutting weeds long before they were replaced by electrical and motorized tools. After misunderstanding Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass – a book very popular among sickles – these artifacts aspired to become poets. The sickles, however, are only capable of harvesting words from already existing poems. Before being captured by the Wounded Tool Library these sickles harvested most of the poetry in the St. Louis public library." (2019)

 

BALM’s Tish and Adam Turl were interviewed by Adam Ray Adkins on The Acid Left Podcast. If you want to support BALM join our Patreon and/or donate to our fundraiser. (Fall 2021)

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The Poverty of Theory (HM 2022)
The Poverty of Theory (HM 2022)

Adam Turl’s presentation for Historical Materialism London 2022 on the relationship of theory and practice in contemporary Marxist cultural criticism and practice in the light of digital communicative capitalism.

BALM Ed. Video #1: Galapagos, Illinois
BALM Ed. Video #1: Galapagos, Illinois

In February 2020 the Born Again Labor Museum began work on the first of a new series of educational videos, Galapagos, Illinois. This video, meant in part as a memorial to Ray Markley, was shot largely on location in Fulton County, Illinois, and conflates the novel Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut with everyday life. Stills from Galapagos, Illinois and its production (in progress):

BALM Ed. Video #2: How to Become a Possum
BALM Ed. Video #2: How to Become a Possum

In November BALM directors Tish Markley and Adam Turl began to micro-dose possum blood in an effort to become immune to Covid 19.

Featured
E-Cential Owl vs. Freedom
E-Cential Owl vs. Freedom

Drawing and digital collage (2020) - product of remote viewing.

Worker's Argus Panoptes
Worker's Argus Panoptes

Drawing and digital collage (2020) - product of remote viewing.

Truck Nuts, Hands Off! - Why Hide Them?
Truck Nuts, Hands Off! - Why Hide Them?

Drawing and digital collage (2020) - product of remote viewing.

Hand-O-Fate (After Emory Douglas)
Hand-O-Fate (After Emory Douglas)

Drawing and digital collage (2020) - product of remote viewing.

Flamingo Caduceus
Flamingo Caduceus

Drawing and digital collage (2020) - product of remote viewing.