Goodnight Rock

This year, it was announced that the one-cent coin is set to be retired. Regardless of whether the U.S. Mint ceases production, the penny will remain in our material world: a familiar fossil layered with multiple meanings and histories. 

Goodnight Rock consists of a publication and multimedia installation that investigates the outmoded penny. Like the coin itself, both the book and the digital image raise questions of reproduction and value. Does the legibility of ubiquitous commodities lead to greater understanding or just the opposite? Goodnight Rock reads the penny as a poetic and political object of growing complexity. Valued at just $0.01, it sits at the bottom of the economic food chain. We know where the chain begins, but where does it end? In a profit-driven economy, what can the humble one-cent coin reveal about broader systems of power?