Repellent Eye Over Phoenix - 2008.
Site-specific intervention and installation. Ten feet diameter vinyl sphere.
Installation view, downtown, Phoenix, AZ.

The Repellent Eye Over Phoenix is a helium filled 10 feet diameter replica of a “scare eye balloon” floating among the Phoenix, AZ skyline. Scare eye balloons are consumer bird repellent products commonly used in domestic trees and small backyard gardens. These products are effective at deterring unwanted birds for a short period of time (perhaps a few days) and then become entirely ineffective. In this sense, the scare eye balloon is embedded with obsolescence and entirely ineffectual. However, the significance of the scare eye balloon goes much deeper. Its colors -- red, yellow and black -- are primary medicine colors (e.g., spiritually empowering colors) among many Indigenous tribes stretching from North America to South America. Further, it is designed to communicate with birds -- the spiritual mediators between the physical world and spiritual world for Indigenous peoples. Therefore, Postcommodity has appropriated the scare eye balloon as a semiotic vessel that signifies a complex nexus of simultaneously conflicting cultural, economic and political issues. Postcommodity then uses this vessel as an embodiment and sign of defiance against colonialism and globalism. In this context, the Repellent Eye Over Phoenix functions as an intervention repelling the manifestations of the Western worldview and imagination.