AFTERLIFE IN It’s a freezing day in Detroit and once again The story of Scott Hocking has found himself crossing a sheet of ice six feet deep in the basement of a man, an egg, the abandoned Central Train Sta- tion. By this point it’s routine. Cross the Roo- and a train station. sevelt Warehouse ice basement, crab walk the flooded underground tunnel, navigate the train station yard, watch out for securi- ty, climb eight flights of stairs, and you’ll see By Isabella the reason for Hocking’s persistence. Here, arranged in the center of the hall, stand two Achenbach tons of marble detritus, laboriously hand- gathered from the station’s destruction and carefully and respectfully configured into a monumentally delicate:

egg.

The ingenuity. (previous page) Scott Hocking, The Egg and MCTS #0091, Downtown from Top Floor, 2009. Archival pigment print from the site-specific installation and photography project The Egg and Michigan Central Train Station (2007-2013). All images © Scott Hocking 2018, courtesy of the art- ist and David Klein Gallery, Detroit.

(this page) Scott Hocking, The Egg and Michigan Central Train Station #4764, 2012. Scott Hocking, The Egg and Michigan Central Train Station #5957, 2011. Archival pigment print. Pillars in the basement of the Roosevelt Warehouse reflect off the smooth surface of flooded water. This photograph was taken at the entrance of (above) (below) an underground conveyor tunnel, which marks part two of Hocking’s circuitous Scott Hocking, The Egg and Michigan Scott Hocking, The Egg and Michigan route into the train station. Central Train Station #9036, 2011. Central Train Station #9452, 2011. Archival pigment print. Morning light Archival pigment print. Columns line seeps into the Waiting Room, which the ticket lobby between the station’s Like all of Hockings’ site-specific instal- demolished, “cleaned up,” and returned to features 80-foot ceilings modeled waiting room and concourse. lations, the egg was designed to be pho- its original state of scattered marble wreck- after Roman Baths. tographed, to interact with its physical age, marking the end of Hocking’s project, environment over time, and to provide a and the early beginnings of the train sta- shockingly beautiful chance encounter for tion’s corporate rebirth. Detroit’s plethora of “urban explorers.” The station is not only a part of De- Despite the difficult journey, many troit’s rich, fraught, and controversial past people found their way to the egg—a mag- and present, it is emblematic of it. News ical sight, I can only imagine. The con- spread quickly throughout the city and trast between the station’s underbelly and nation this summer when Ford Motor Co. Hocking’s eighth floor installation is dra- purchased the building after 30 years of matic, terrifying, and dreamy. En route to vacancy and neglect. The building is over the egg, Hocking would emerge from the 100 years old, with construction beginning underground tunnel, which was tagged in 1912 under the architectural direction of the “haunted fuck hole,” dank with de- Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem, the cades of neglected water, and frozen with two firms that designed New York’s Grand layers of industrial waste and, as Hocking Central Station. Michigan Central Station, discovered, human remains. Symbolically, like its New York counterpart, is elegant in and with the cyclical passing of each win- design, grand in scale, powerful in material, ter’s frost and spring’s warmth, the egg and impressive in construction. Traditional was born upstairs. Eventually, it would be midwestern modesty did not apply. 122 123 Scott Hocking, Ziggurat, East, Summer, 2008. Archival pigment print from the site-specific installation and photography project Ziggurat and Fisher Body 21 (2007-2009). This pyramid (ziggurat) was created using over 6,000 wooden floor blocks in Detroit’s abandoned Fisher Body Plant #21.

Scott Hocking, Garden of the Gods, Zeus, Ice, 2009. Archival pigment print from the site-spe- cific installation and photography project Garden of the Gods (2009-2011). This image shows a wooden television atop the pedestal of a lone column in the abandoned Packard automobile Scott Hocking, Hephaestus and the Garden of the Gods, complex. It symbolizes Zeus, one of the 12 classical Greek gods referenced in this series. Snow, 2010. Archival pigment print.

The station functioned smooth- Over the next 29 years the sta- ly from its opening in 1913 through the tion became a symbol for “The Tragedy of 1940s—a time when 4,000 passengers a Detroit,” as the New York Times kindly day walked across its marble floors in the headlined in 1990. Its abandon and ruin Roman bathhouse-inspired waiting room was a reflection of the city’s economic hard- and 3,000 people worked in the office tower ship and associated experience with insti- (in which 70 years later an enormous mar- tutionalized racism. The reverberations of ble egg was lovingly erected on the eighth this history are felt with great weight today. floor). But by the 1960s the amount of pas- The resurgence of the white population sengers was in steady decline due to afford- returning to Detroit zip codes, business able air travel and Detroit’s famous indus- developments’ hefty, quick deals, and auto trial contribution: the motor vehicle. With companies that initiated the demise of the birth of personal cars came the death Detroit’s public transit and are now, ironical- of Detroit’s public transportation services, ly, buying multi-million dollar train stations, and by 1988 the last train left Michigan are constant points of contention. Central Station, headed for . 124 Hocking, who hails from Metro buildings without the work being insig- and the structures that Hocking constructs mythologies to current events, his artworks Detroit and has lived in the city for 23 years, nificant compared to the buildings them- within them. “As a part of my art practice I focus on transformation, ephemerality, is not tone-deaf. “I care about the history; I selves,” he said. “I was blown away by the am interested in how our ruins, our relics, chance, and the cycles of nature. His art- think about the history; the history factors layers of history, the way nature had in- our artifacts, will be interpreted and per- work has been exhibited internationally into what I do,” he said. Hocking began the filtrated and quickly began to take them ceived by future people. I’m kind of playing and nationally, including the Kunst-Werke project in 2007, when the station’s poten- apart, and how I could be so isolated in with the idea of what ceremony is, which Institute, the French Triennial Lille 3000: tial was underrecognized and the neighbor- these monster spaces—on a roof, in a base- you can see in a lot of my work where I Renaissance, the Museum of Contempo- hood—Corktown—was yet to be gentrified. ment, totally alone for hours—they became make these pseudo ceremonial sites, pseu- rary Art Chicago, The Mattress Factory Art The first three years of the project were like solaces to me, a bit like my churches, do worship sites, pseudo archaeological Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and spent researching. This meant thorough where I would find peace and quietude. The digs,” he said. the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at MSU, explorations of the building, grounds, and train station was one of my favorites—big Hocking’s work aims to create a where his installation The Sleeper (Cow- related archives, leading to an appreciation surprise.” conceptual conflation of past, present, and catcher) is currently on view through Sep- that few others experienced, an appreci- Hocking’s work often takes a far- future peoples, sites, art, and rituals, in tember 30th. ation that comes from traveling through ther look back, recontextualzing traditional both a humorous and a serious tone. It will Isabella Achenbach is an independent cu- spaces that have crumbled and some sites and structures of ceremony and ritual, always be current. Physically, the deterio- rator, exhibitions & publications project that have held up. Hocking describes his such as pyramids, earth mounds, henges, ration of the structures is a part of its story, manager (University of Michigan Muse- work as being like a “long term relationship.” and cairns, within Detroit’s historic land- which lives on in photographs. Conceptu- um of Art), Spanish language practitioner He has devoted his time and artistic marks. “The project is based on the ancient ally, it’s rooted across time. The Egg and and beach aficionado from Washington, practice to many of Detroit’s historic and symbolic meanings of the egg, as well as Michigan Central Train Station is forever. DC, currently living in Detroit, Michigan. abandoned buildings, such as the Pack- stacked stones that can be found world- Her latest research involves curatorial ap- ard auto plant, where he created Garden wide [cairns],” Hocking wrote. “The form of Scott Hocking’s childhood nickname was proaches to digital media art, social me- of the Gods, a self-demolishing shrine to an egg has traditionally represented the un- Scooter. He grew up on a dirt road, near a dia as an exhibition space, music video the 12 gods of the classical Greek Panthe- born potential yet to be hatched; the new railroad track, with a dog named Bubba, culture, and, broadly, contemporary art on. Each god was represented by what we beginning; the gestating idea; the primordi- who sometimes slept on the kitchen table. of the Americas. She recently curated The now consider “ancient” wooden television al matter; creation. Cairns have been used He’s a sixth generation Detroiter, descend- Sister Show (The Hosting, Ann Arbor) and sets, found from within the building and as markers of tombs, caves, or pathways; ed from Baltic Polish immigrants and a long Personal Space (Public Pool, Detroit), and positioned atop the remains of the plant’s places of significance; astronomical and line of Cornish copper miners who settled in co-founded a Detroit-based pop-up gal- colossal columns. The columns, and with navigational tools; and points of mystical or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Hocking cre- lery called Girl Girl Girl, where she curated them, the televisions, fell one by one, sea- religious importance.” ates site-specific installations, sculptures Olayami Dabls: A Flickr Retrospective. son by season. There is a deeply layered, yet play- and photography projects, often using “It was a long period of time before ful, tension between the grandiose sites, found materials and neglected locations. I felt worthy to do an installation in these the ruin, the cyclical decay and regrowth, Inspired by subjects ranging from ancient Scott Hocking, The Egg and Michigan Central Train Station #0064, Southwest from Roof, 2009. Archival pigment print. A view of SW Detroit from the train station roof captures the Bridge to Canada, the , and the steam-billowing industrial complexes of Zug Island and the Rouge River.