The suburbs are a violent place—just not for the decent folks who live in them.
Across the land, the postwar American family migrated to a new and verdant frontier: the suburb. Join us and explore this outpost! Experience the postwar planned community in all its monolithic splendor! The image on the book’s back cover features artist Johannah Herr’s flocked architectural model of the “Jubilee” Levittown home, which came fully furnished with new appliances—and a racial covenant on the home’s deed that to this day remains nearly impossible to remove.
The model was first included in Herr’s solo show I Have Seen the Future. Through a sensibility that emphasized intersectionality, interconnectedness, and correlation, I Have Seen the Future was a multifaceted, immersive exhibit of components meant to evoke the experience of visiting the 1964 World’s Fair—with the hindsight of 2022. The show also featured I Have Seen the Future: Official Guidebook, a collaboration with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler.
Herr and Sheffler’s latest collaboration, White Flight!, takes a journey deep into the dark heart of the “American Home Pavilion.” Meant to accompany Herr’s latest solo of the same name, White Flight! picks up where the Official Guide left off. White Flight! asks who was allowed into suburbia—and what mechanisms of exclusion kept others out. The history of the suburbs draws a direct path to today’s mottled US map of desperately unequal opportunities and wealth distribution. Through collage, subverted advertisements, found texts, and essays, White Flight! tells the story of what actually constitutes a white picket fence. —!AGITPOP PRESS!
