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Let's Find the Hidden Ed Ruscha Sculpture in the Mojave

A new documentary by the co-writer of 'Eternal Sunshine' has enlisted a team of experts and screenwriters to find a fake rock. In the desert. Seriously.

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“What is an art piece that nobody can see?” asks Pierre Bismuth, the French contemporary artist perhaps best-known for co-writing Academy Award-winning screenplay Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. "What is an art piece that nobody knows about? […] I understand that an artist can do an invisible piece, but a piece that no one knows is kind of weird. It’s beyond any kind of conceptual statement you can have.”

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The piece in question is ROCKY II, a resin-fabricated stone that the artist Ed Ruscha placed among real rocks in the Mojave desert in 1980. For WHERE IS ROCKY II, an ongoing concept documentary currently on Indiegogo, Bismuth has compiled a team consisting of a seasoned private detective, four art community leaders as "informants," and three screenwriters, to find it.

Ten years ago, after watching a 1980 BBC documentary on Ruscha's original placement of the fake rock, Bismuth became infatuated with the long-lost artwork. Beginning his inquiry into the matter by discussing it with Ruscha's contemporaries, he was surprised to find that many had never even heard of the piece. “I really started to think I was crazy,” Bismuth told The Guardian of his early inquest. “I was glad I had a tape of the film, because otherwise I would have thought I’d dreamt it.”

Fast-foward to today where Bismuth's team, which includes Private Detective Michael Scott, a former LA County sheriff and homicide investigator, Director of LACMA Michael Govan, MOCA director Philippe Vergne, and DV Devincentis, Anthony Peckham, and Mike White (the screenwriters of Nightcrawler, Sherlock, and School of Rock, respectively) are still on the case. The screenwriters were brought on board to pen a fictionalized short film about Scott's investigation, which, if the crowdfunding campaign is successful, will be shot this spring.

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"All this footage (the "real" and the "imagined") will then be woven together in the editing room, piece by piece, hint by hint, step by step," into the final documentary WHERE IS ROCKY II, according to the project's Indiegogo page. As an added bonus, perks for donors include a bag of sand from the desert where the film is being shot, the screenplay from Devincentis, Peckham, and White (sent one page at a time until the film's US theatrical debut), and even a secret file, personally hidden in your computer by Bismuth himself.

As for the actual status of Ruscha's fake rock, however, that's TBD.

Via The Guardian

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