Parasite franchise

[imomus]

Well, this unreliable tour thing seems to be an extensible brand, or perhaps a sort of "parasite franchise" in the manner of Cattelan, Subotnick and Gioni's Wrong Gallery and their unreliable, unauthorized Gagosian Gallery at the Berlin Bienniale.

Tonight at 7.30pm I give an unreliable tour at the Rubin Museum. Located in the Chelsea district of New York at the corner of 17th Street and 7th Avenue, the museum specializes in the art of the Himalayas. Something I know very little about, but of course that doesn't matter when your job is to spin then projectile-shoot gossamer untruths into a big web of lies, a web in which you catch a few flies, for whom, like some sort of big lying, crying spider, you weep crocodile tears which hang there like shimmering liquid diamonds.

My tour will be part of the Artists on Art series: Contemporary artists contemplate Himalayan art. The event is free.

Artists on Art
Rubin Museum
Art of the Himalayas

150 West 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
212-620-5000

Friday April 14th
7.30pm
Free

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually it turned out fine, the museum encourages very personal responses, and has even got a program where they make people write captions for works, and these become the official captions, so they were totally into the whimsicality. Basically, I made up this scenario in which an unknown Scottish King called Fergus the Great took elephants across Europe and invaded Tibet, bringing many Scottish customs with him. I explained each picture or sculpture as a facet of Scottish culture (deities with multiple arms became Gorbals mums beating their babies, deer sculpture became "wally dugs", a demon became a bouncer on Lothian Road, didactic illuminations became the tabloid press, an artist making murals became a 3000 year-old man who'd actually drawn everything in the museum, etc).

What a great museum, by the way. Very impressed.