April 9, 2026
Good Dead: Remakes and reruns.
Hi.
I’m thinking about the role of revision in the creative process. Also on my mind is context, scale, and an artwork as a story that continues after the exhibition closes.
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Good Dead
Diane Appaix-Castro and Lera Niemackl’s The Dawn of Species Singularity
Evil Dead 2 is both a remake and a sequel. I was in my early twenties when I watched the comedy-horror film series with Jake and Justin—my best friends and former high school metalheads versed in the genre. Aside from a couple iconic quotes, the thing that has stuck with me all these years about Evil Dead 2 is that an artwork can be both a remake and a sequel. Last month at The Front, New Orleans-based artist Diane Appaix-Castro and her collaborator Lera Niemackl, exhibited the second iteration—a remake and a sequel—of their project, The Dawn of Species Singularity (DOSS).
When I visited Diane’s studio last October, a gigantic human sternum lay on a table in the middle of the space like an alien autopsy. There were other bones round, 25 times human scale. The artist describes the project as both an installation and a story.
It’s a speculative future for earth after the collapse of speciation. DNA has collapsed on itself in order to create a being that’s adaptable to this new environment… In a good way!
Ha! Good Dead.
Diane showed me a mock-up of the installation which would be on view the following month at Crescent City Clayworks (CCC). It’s not gallery, but a multi-use space with studios and open storage. When she said “warehouse,” I pictured Turbine Hall or The Ford Assembly Plant—massive post-industrial spaces now used for art exhibition. (Note for later discussion: expectations can adversely affected the encounter.) It’s courageous to exhibit art outside traditional white cube galleries. Art is sometimes served by shifts in scale and context and sometimes not. It’s hard to know until you try.
In November, I rang the buzzer for entry at CCC, waited a while, then followed someone inside. I intuited my way past working studios and storage shelves until I saw the installation set up in a corner of the semi open space.
