- INTERVIEW -
with Chairman of the Bureau, Benn Colker
For ECLECorative Magazine – November, 2019
At his request, I meet Benn Colker by the back door of his institution. The old factory building is a five-story brick monolith, sitting within a string of vacant lots. At first glance, the structure looks abandoned, and I’ve been told the Bureau of Objects likes keeping it that way. When we set up the interview, Benn told me to make sure I used the secret knock when I arrived. I’m pretty sure he was joking, but I figure I’ll try it anyway. There is no answer. After about fifteen minutes Benn appears from around the side of the building. He is sweating and dirty. He seems unaware that he is late and is instead unabashedly enthralled with the ambiguous piece of rusty metal he’s dragging behind him.
BC: Take a look at this thing! On my way here I saw it just sticking out of the ground about three blocks down. That storm last week must have unearthed it. I’ve got no idea what it is.
EM: What are you going to do with it?
BC: Part of me wants to put it into the personal vault, but I’ll probably just submit it to the Bureau and see which department is interested. I’ve been trying to do that more often these days. It keeps the personal stash from getting out of hand. Here, let's get inside. We’ll drop this in “Object Receiving.”
We walk through a series of dark hallways. The lights are flickering and it sounds like there are machines somewhere in the building trying to engage. Benn opens a large fire door with a counterweight system and we enter a vast room filled with work tables, tools and objects of all sizes. Along the walls are shelves that seem to have some vague sense of organization. Benn tosses the metal detritus onto a shelf labeled “Receiving - Medium-Large.”
BC: Object Receiving is just organized based on size. Suitcase-sized objects go there. I’ll bet Theresa will take this one though. She’s got a project right now looking at folded surfaces. That’s her research station over there. You can tell the Bureau is really cranking these days because it's just object chaos all over the place. I love it.
EM: So I have to admit – I’m aware of some of the Bureau’s work, but I’m still not clear on exactly what this institution is and I haven’t been able to find much on its members or who commissions the work.
BC: Well, the Department of Monetary Value handles the finances. They do research too, but they keep this place running. To be honest, it all seems like magic to me. I try to stay out of their way. As for the staff, these folks have all been really close to me for a long time. At some point, it became clear that we were all worshipping similar deities. So I thought, hell, let's build ourselves a church.
EM: So the Bureau of Objects is basically a collective of artists and analysts.
BC: I suppose it is in some sense. But I don’t really like the connotations of the term “collective.” We’re more like a ministry. Or a consortium
EM: What’s wrong with “collective?”
BC: Well, our group is just based on different assumptions
EM: Such as?
BC: That’s confidential.
EM: You’re just evading the question
BC: You’re damn right I am. But I suppose you could say this thing is based on a race into the unknown. We’ll get together on a Friday night and argue about who’s in the lead – which can get pretty convoluted, since the pursuits are artistic and some of the staff aren't real - or rather, most of their identities are fictional to some degree.
EM: Wait, which parts are fictional? Which identities are you talking about?
BC: I’m not at liberty to discuss that. But what is the “actual” identity of a person anyway? What is the “actual” identity of an object? These questions - see that’s what the Bureau is all about. Here, let me tell you a story. You know about the legend of John Henry?
EM: You mean the song about the steel-driving man beating the steam drill?
BC: Yeah. Well legend has it, that famous contest actually took place outside Talcott, West Virginia, back in the 1870s, when the C&O railroad was blasting a hole through the mountain to build the Big Bend Tunnel. These days, the new tunnel is called Big Bend and the original tunnel is called Great Bend – it’s a little confusing. But they’re right next to one another. So my dad and I used to visit these tunnels whenever we were nearby. I was raised on railroads and collecting among other things, so naturally, the last time we were there, I picked up a couple of rocks and took them home with me. Here, I’ll show you. They’re somewhere over here.
Benn leads me through a door, down another hallway and into his office. The shelves are covered in small objects and wooden boxes. After rummaging for a few minutes he finds the rocks.
BC: Here they are! Take a look. Now why are those rocks worth saving? What makes them important? I mean, they’re just like any other rocks with that particular geological makeup. Just a couple boring-ass clumps of molecules. But at the same time, they have these complex identities. These rocks are from the actual, real tunnel where this possibly-fabricated, likely-embellished event may have possibly have taken place. Those particular rocks may have been there when it all went down. They also may have been dumped on the rail bed days before we got there. I don't know my rocks well enough. But for all I know – at least all I care to know - one of those rocks may have touched the boot of John Henry himself. I mean, pilgrims throughout history have risked everything just to be in the presence of an object based on supposed identities like that.
But regardless of when they arrived on the scene, these rocks construct the legend of John Henry in my mind when I look at them. That’s real to me. And they are authentic references to the particular day that my father and I were at that tunnel. And then each particular rock I collected is significant because, among thousands of rocks lying there, I happen to look down and see that particular one.
So are those all identities embedded in those rocks? Now, you could say that all these significant qualities are just human projection, but I like to think of the rocks as active participants - as witnesses of sorts. Tell me this - If a rock falls in the woods and no one is there to see it, is that event still tied to the rock? And one of the rocks I collected did indeed fall from the hill while I was standing there. Blam. It just fell off the mountain. Talk about object identities, lets talk about object intentions! I think these rocks are trying to get somewhere - maybe they’re trying to get to Cleveland in the next 500 years. The rocks simply used me as a vehicle for their journey. They saw an opening and made themselves noticeable.
EM: I don’t know. I think what you’re holding is just a box of rocks.
BC: Say what you will. In my construction of the universe, these are truly rocks among rocks.
