The Brief
Ten labels worth lifting. Take one to the street.
A museum hangs its mythology on the wall and hopes you won’t read the fine print. Pick a label, post it, and put the manufacturing record in front of the next person who only saw the frame.
Thesis01 / 10
History arrives as evidence. Mythology arrives as interior decorating. At The Museum of Truth, the wall label is the manufacturing record.
The Mechanic02 / 10
The walls don't move. The frame does. Lift any wall label and the authorized story slides aside to show how the piece was actually made.
The Wet Paint03 / 10
A museum label is supposed to authenticate the object. This one authenticates only the act of labelling. The paint is always wet.
The Buffalo Jump04 / 10
A 1985 Cabinet submission named its goal as 'cultural death,' then spent 35 years recoating it: self-government, inherent right, reconciliation. The rhetoric ascends; the mechanism never moves.
The Buffalo Jump05 / 10
Sanitizing runs opposite to the rhetoric. Each coat of language was brighter than the last — and the document underneath never changed.
The Gateway06 / 10
A $13.4M audit program examined ~60 advocacy charities and zero large foundations — against ~$135B in tax-receipted assets. The rule was 'even-handed' the way a slope is.
The Aggregate07 / 10
Gig work in Canada, same year, measured three ways: 0.3%, 8.2%, ~30%. Two orders of magnitude. The certainty is the artifact.
The Aggregate08 / 10
The definition precedes the figure. An upper-bound estimate gets published once and cited downstream forever as settled fact.
The Continuity09 / 10
The system of state-managed family separation didn't end — it changed shape. The institution's name changes every generation. The child's removal does not.
Curation10 / 10
The museum frames; it does not re-host. Every acquisition writes a new wall label and links back to the case it was drawn from. Receipts first.