Family Tweets

For Desert X 2017 in California's Coachella Valley, Prince installed printouts from his Birdtalk blog—originally posted on Twitter (@richardprince4) in 2014—inside and outside an abandoned house in Desert Hot Springs. The works explored familial relationships, social media appropriation, and domestic dysfunction through appropriated and original tweets. Three days after installation, visitors removed most works, creating an unintended participatory performance that became integral to the piece's meaning. This book preserves the ephemeral installation, documenting Prince's investigation of digital culture, social media, and the constructed self in the age of Twitter.