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.
×