Center for Utopian Socialist Studies, 2011.
The Center for Utopian Socialist Studies (C.U.S.S.) serves as both avatar and headquarters for the Worldshaving project as well as reading room containing select literature and ephemera pertaining to utopian social formations. Situated in Troy, NY floating near the precipice of a waterfall on the Wyantskill river that once powered the illustrious Burden Iron Works’ waterwheel―the world’s largest and thought to have been the primary influence for the invention of the Ferris Wheel (inaugurated at the World Columbian Exposition of 1893, which in turn served as primary influence for King Gillette’s 1894 conception of Metropolis) ―C.U.S.S. looks to the narratives that drive the creation of place and the mega-identities of city and industry through a hermetic constellation investigating and questioning the site-specific, while simultaneously uniting and negating notions of past, present, and future.
