Art’s “smallness” becomes apparent when measured against the sociological and environmental precarity we are facing. It appears smaller still when positioned as the antidote to this degrading reality—a narrative often promoted by those most responsible for our societal death spiral. Recognizing the tendencies of corporate entities to decouple their support of socially-conscious art from the actual impacts of their operations, Davis writes: “The entire art industry is built on the fantasy of artists as a special class of visionaries whose imagination will Change the World—it is always more palatable for powerful people to fund an art show of radical images than actually to get behind radical change.”

On Interstate-94 between Minneapolis and southern Wisconsin, flattened farmland gradually gives way to sandstone buttes. 18,000 years ago, this ground held a glacial lake. When the glacier receded, an ice dam broke, unleashing a violent flood that forged the buttes’ contours. Eventually, in the flood’s wake, the Waterpark Capital of the World™ would be built. Since the first waterslide was installed in 1980, “the Dells”—shorthand for this area—has become a land of “COUNTRY’S ONLY” and “PLANET’S BIGGEST”. Among these achievements is the United States’s largest inverted monument: the Upside-Down White House. This imitation of the presidential palace is the reason for my visit. I hoped that, a year removed from the U.S. Capitol insurrection, walking its upturned halls would bring some clarity to a democracy forever taking on water, now sinking to impossible depths.