Pubdate: Tue, 22 Jun 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: C1
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Colin Moynihan

The Art of the Potentially Deadly Deal:

MARKETING HEROIN ON THE STREET

The empty glassine packets can be found in Manhattan, Brooklyn and 
beyond, scattered on streets and sidewalks with only obscure slogans 
or graphic images to suggest their former use. At one time they 
contained heroin and the markings stamped on the packets were meant 
to differentiate strains of varying purity or provenance.

To some they are crime evidence. Addicts may see them mainly as a 
vehicle to fulfill a dangerous urge. For a group of artists who have 
been collecting them they are cultural artifacts that are equally 
unsettling and compelling.

On Wednesday a weeklong show called "Heroin Stamp Project" organized 
by seven members of the Social Art Collective is scheduled to open at 
the White Box Gallery on Broome Street on the Lower East Side. The 
show, which will include 150 packets picked off city streets, as well 
as 12 blown-up prints made from them, is meant to examine the 
intersection of advertising and addiction and provoke questions about 
how society addresses dependence and disease.

The origins of the show can be traced to 2001, when Pedro 
Mateu-Gelabert, a sociologist researching the relationship between 
H.I.V. and drug use, first glimpsed the packets in an empty building 
in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, where addicts would shoot up. 
Immediately, he said, he was struck by the fact that the images on 
the glassine envelopes served as advertisements.

"This was the marketing of heroin," he said on a recent evening as he 
stood on a corner in Bushwick. "Even something so forbidden, so 
demonized, can be branded."

He began collecting the packets and about six years ago he showed 
them to a friend, Liza Vadnai, who was taken by their combination of 
menace and fragile beauty. Joined by others, they continued gathering 
packets with the aim of organizing an exhibition.

Ms. Vadnai, who had counseled drug users in San Francisco before 
moving to New York, wanted to balance the presentation of the bags as 
art objects with some consciousness of the devastation caused by the 
powder they had once held.

"I felt the public health message had to be very clear," she said as 
she walked with Mr. Mateu-Gelabert along a stretch of Troutman 
Street, where the artists had regularly searched for their raw 
material. "I wasn't sure how to showcase them without it feeling exploitive."

Just over 1,800 unstamped packets -- the number a heavy heroin user 
might go through in a year, the show notes -- will be arranged in 
rows on a wall in an effort to make the idea of addiction seem less 
abstract. Bags typically sell for about $10, Ms. Vadnai said, and may 
contain anywhere from 30 milligrams of heroin up to a tenth of a 
gram. Cards bearing facts about the health hazards of injection drug 
use will also be distributed at the show.

In addition, Ms. Vadnai, Mr. Mateu-Gelabert and their collaborators 
decided to give some of the show's proceeds to the Lower East Side 
Harm Reduction Center, a counseling and needle-exchange organization 
near the gallery. The collective members said such an organization 
has more of an impact than groups that simply seek to get drug users to quit.

Heroin users donated some of the packets in the exhibition. Social 
Art Collective members found others near drug distribution spots and 
areas where addicts congregate. The artists found packets in the 
rugged streets of Bushwick and in Mott Haven in the Bronx, and in the 
gentrifying streets of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and the 
Lower East Side. They picked up packets near the stately brownstones 
that surround Gramercy Park, and inside Tompkins Square Park, where 
the trade flourished in the 1980s and into the 90s and still exists.

The stamps that identify the heroin inside draw on a wide range of 
references. There are names like White Fang, Time Bomb and Monster 
Power, which is decorated with an image of the grim reaper with a 
scythe. There are allusions to religion (Deadly Sin and the Last 
Temptation), crime (Notorious and Outlaw) and publishing (Life, in 
white capitals against a red background, and Daily News, along with 
the old camera logo of that tabloid). There is also a packet stamped 
with the words "Tango and Cash," the name attached to a 
fentanyl-laced brand of heroin that infamously caused 12 fatal 
overdoses in one weekend in 1991.

Several heroin brands seem to dwell on the delicate balance of 
mortality that accompanies their use. Those include the Last Shot, 
Game Over, No Exit and No Pain, which is illustrated with a coffin and a cross.

"Many of them are metaphors," Ms. Vadnai said. "They are saying that 
the heroin is so strong, so good, it might kill you."

Mr. Mateu-Gelabert agreed, saying that such names and images were 
"playing with the edge between life and death."

While collecting packets, the organizers also conducted a form of 
ethnographic research, speaking with dealers, users and runners, who 
serve as intermediaries in a drug sale. One member of the collective, 
Ashley Jordan, interviewed a man who designed and made rubber stamps 
that were used to place images on packets.

Those images may not be copyrighted but their creators still have 
highly proprietary feelings. Earlier this year, Mr. Mateu-Gelabert 
said, a heroin dealer in Bushwick became upset that another man had 
appeared on his territory and copied his brand, Too Strong. The first 
dealer began distributing a new brand, called Shooters -- one of 
those in the show -- which featured two revolvers facing each other.

"It was really about sending a message to the dealer who was selling 
in his neighborhood on his block," Mr. Mateu-Gelabert said. "It was 
to convey the message that if you continue messing with our market 
you will face the guns." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake