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When you think of Detroit, you might think about the city’s proud musical history, stretching from John Lee Hooker through Motown and the MC5 to more recent acts like Eminem or anyone from the techno scene.
Perhaps you’d rather think about the auto industry that provided the city’s backbone, or maybe even the fact that the Justice League of America once lived there (No, really). Any one of these things is something that you’d expect a city to boast about — and yet, somehow, it’s RoboCop that’s getting a 10-foot-tall statue celebrating the city’s cultural heritage.
STORY: The Many, Many Post-Movie Lives of RoboCop
In this case, the statue comes about by public demand — literally. The idea for the statue arose from a tweeted plea to the city’s mayor, and has been paid for via Kickstarter campaign. Upon seeing the statue — currently being assembled in Detroit ahead of a 2014 unveiling — John Leonard, who started the whole ball rolling, admitted that it was “larger than even my wildest imagination.”
The statue itself will be the result of collaboration between Venus Bronze Works and Center for Conservation, Warren Ally Foundry and Edgewise Forge. Giorgio Gikas, from Venus Bronze Works, told the Detroit Free Press that he believes the status represents “the new generation of our town.” Leonard sees it similarly. “I think it complements a lot of the other positive things that are happening in the city,” he said.
So, who wants to start the Kickstarter for an ED-209 statue to stand menacingly behind the RoboCop? After all, it would be the next generation of crowdfunded science fiction statues.
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