White Mushroom, Black Earth

The roomful of dirt stubbornly occupies a second floor gallery in the center of New York SoHo. The rent of SoHo spaces has skyrocketed in the past few decades, yet since the 80s, this huge volume of ungrounded earth has generated nothing profitable as a permanent tenant. The story of a fictional character Nate -- a self-claimed first generation New Yorker who was born and raised in Pittsburg -- was told in parallel through the voice of an uncharacterized narrator "I". A third character, William Dilworth, the Earth Room keeper in real life since 1980s, appeared in this film as himself eating a plate of salad with imaginary mushroom picked out from the earth. In an old New York Times interview, he described how he would routinely plough through the earth and pick out anything that grew out of it that could potentially distract audience attention, including mushrooms.

The film situates the fictional human characters within the larger socio historical context of the New York Earth Room, commenting on the recent development of SoHo and ongoing gentrifications in New York City.