![]() The work also featured Smith’s alter-ego “Mike,” an uber-bland dude, often clad in boxer shorts and sporting a cheesy cockeyed grin, whom Smith had portrayed in performances, videos, and drawings since the late 70s. Meticulously simulating a typically tasteless Middle-American home, the environment at Castelli included a washer and dryer, a hi-fi with a collection of vinyl records, metal shelving filled with barrels of “survival ration crackers,” and a snack bar with hinged canopy that, according to FEMA, could be filled with concrete blocks to create a shield against radiation. Inside the gallery’s 61st Street space, Smith and Herman constructed a full-scale bomb shelter, based on a 1980 Federal Emergency Management Agency pamphlet that instructed citizens on how to modify a basement rec room so it could double as home defense from nuclear attack. In 1983, Michael Smith premiered his installation Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar, a collaboration with artist and set designer Alan Herman, at Castelli Graphics in New York. Presented by Michael Smith and Paul Slocum
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