The Motherfuckers’ garbage stunt ignored the Black janitor whom the mess burdened

Evidence

The Motherfuckers took urban detritus as their material. If anything, they identified with the garbage. … Using a wheeled bin likely liberated from the Cooper Station Post Office, the Motherfuckers deliver at least some of their garbage to the entrance of the Metropolitan Opera. Spectators gawk, cops mill about, hardened New Yorkers pay no attention, although the shot of a Black janitor leaning on his broom watching a motherfucking mess being made for him to clean up provides a contradiction the Motherfuckers might not have acknowledged. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1166

Categorization

• SEED: The janitor-as-witness detail is a compressed essay: how avant-garde’s anti-institutional gestures always offload their labor onto invisibles.
• XREF: Relates to the reader’s core interest in gentrification — the advance guard offloads both literal cleanup and later displacement onto the powerless.