Balcer later turned the poem into a blues song, "Backbone", featuring the blues artists Captain Luke on vocals and Big Ron Hunter on guitar and produced by Michael Sackler-Berner. "Backbone" was exhibited at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut in 2012, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the Asia Society Hong Kong Center in 2014, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2015 at SCADA in 2015-16, and at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing in the fall of 2018. Balcer produced a film documenting Xu Bing's "Tobacco Project: Virginia" (2011).