Failing to die at the ICA
Feb. 4th, 2009 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm very proud to announce that I will not -- for the first time -- be contributing a live art performance to a season being held at the ICA in London.
My performance Widow Twanky's Deathbed won't be happening in the corridors of the ICA during the weekend of June 27th and 28th, from noon until 2AM. "A bed is set up in a niche in a corridor of the ICA in which Momus lies, dressed as the pantomime character Widow Twanky," explains the program. "Members of the public squeezing past to get from one part of the building to another are transformed, as they pass this niche, into visitors paying their last respects to the dying Pantomime Dame (traditionally played, of course, by a man). As the public files past, Momus recalls the highlights of his life in a stream of consciousness sometimes coherent, sometimes rambling and delusional, and punctuated by absurd songs. His voice is altered by electronic processing. The character recalls Stanley Baxter and other Scottish vaudevillians, and relates to a song on Momus’s most recent album."
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All this, and a great deal more, won't be happening as part of the True Riches season, which begins today and fails to run at the ICA until the end of the year. True Riches is a spectacular non-event curated by Ant Hampton (Rotozaza) and Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment) in response to ICA director Ekow Eshun's decision, last October, to close the ICA's Live Art department because -- according to him -- the artform "lacks depth and cultural urgency". My non-performance has been conceived, then, as a sort of non-swansong for the Live Art medium within the ICA, and an opportunity for the public, at least, to pay its by-no-means-last respects.
Failing to gain the official imprimatur of Britain's premier cutting edge arts institution fulfills a long-unheld ambition of mine, so be sure not to make a note in your diary to come along and see me -- in the role of Widow Twanky, and, allegorically, Live Art itself -- not dying at the ICA this June. Don't fail to miss it!
My performance Widow Twanky's Deathbed won't be happening in the corridors of the ICA during the weekend of June 27th and 28th, from noon until 2AM. "A bed is set up in a niche in a corridor of the ICA in which Momus lies, dressed as the pantomime character Widow Twanky," explains the program. "Members of the public squeezing past to get from one part of the building to another are transformed, as they pass this niche, into visitors paying their last respects to the dying Pantomime Dame (traditionally played, of course, by a man). As the public files past, Momus recalls the highlights of his life in a stream of consciousness sometimes coherent, sometimes rambling and delusional, and punctuated by absurd songs. His voice is altered by electronic processing. The character recalls Stanley Baxter and other Scottish vaudevillians, and relates to a song on Momus’s most recent album."
[Error: unknown template video]
All this, and a great deal more, won't be happening as part of the True Riches season, which begins today and fails to run at the ICA until the end of the year. True Riches is a spectacular non-event curated by Ant Hampton (Rotozaza) and Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment) in response to ICA director Ekow Eshun's decision, last October, to close the ICA's Live Art department because -- according to him -- the artform "lacks depth and cultural urgency". My non-performance has been conceived, then, as a sort of non-swansong for the Live Art medium within the ICA, and an opportunity for the public, at least, to pay its by-no-means-last respects.
Failing to gain the official imprimatur of Britain's premier cutting edge arts institution fulfills a long-unheld ambition of mine, so be sure not to make a note in your diary to come along and see me -- in the role of Widow Twanky, and, allegorically, Live Art itself -- not dying at the ICA this June. Don't fail to miss it!
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 01:43 am (UTC)Euthanasia
Date: 2009-02-04 01:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 01:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:15 am (UTC)Actually, wasn't there something like live art done at an IKEA somewhere recently, involving a young-ish couple living in one of the store's room set-ups or something?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:20 am (UTC)I'll be there!
Oh wait, I WON'T be there, wink wink
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 07:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:01 am (UTC)Wanky Twanky
Date: 2009-02-04 10:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 10:08 am (UTC)best,
ant
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 12:51 pm (UTC)Re: Wanky Twanky
Date: 2009-02-04 01:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 01:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:42 pm (UTC)Chapter One: Devil?
Chapter Two: Devil indeed
Chapter Three: Mask or man?
Chapter Four: Man
Chapter Five: Man as Devil
Chapter Six: Completely, utterly and totally unacceptable
Chapter Seven: Empire of Evil
Chapter Eight: Conclusion and consideration of death penalty
Chapter Nine: Plea for clemency by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Chapter Ten: Fraternal greetings from Kim Jong-Il and Fidel Castro, conveyed at gallows
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:42 pm (UTC)... " There's na wrong with gala luncheons, lad!"
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 06:56 pm (UTC)I have a whole CV of the stuff.
It worried me recently to read that some contemporary stars lived in imaginary artistic worlds as children inventing bands and band members and releases and covers and interviews only in later life to actually become their dreams.
I'll have to get my head around the artistic model of Fraud in the current climate.
Reading actor David Thewlis' novel The Late Hector Kipling is helping.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 08:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 10:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:17 am (UTC)I think the various authorities are more happy to have any industry within their borders than they are "happy about the arrangement." They realize that the only way they can compete with larger, more industrialized countries is by lowering the bar on accountability and whatnot. But what they get in return may not even be worth it, at the end of the day. For them, it is not a matter of being "happy" really, but of being "less sad." They allow their limited resources and infrastructures to be exploited because if they aren't being exploited outright, then they're not bringing any lucre in at all.
It's interesting how much of IKEA's tax evasion is occurring in what is largely perceived to be the "socialist democratic" world ... the world of uncontroversial universal health care systems and various social safety nets, which one would think it might be a priority to see corporations pay their end on.
Anyway, I'm not so sure IKEA hasn't raised an eyebrow from political types in these countries. The only reason why IKEA's financial structure is technically "legal" is because they've been able to jigger the definition of "charitable foundation" to an absurd extent. It's a funny thing that the U.S. might actually have better, more socially just laws in this regard. There's no way that you'd be able to donate a company in your ownership to a supposedly "non-profit," "charitable foundation" of which you were the chairperson, in order to evade taxes, and not see the inside of a federal prison.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:19 am (UTC)And yes, in summary, it may be legal, but it is certainly not ethical, or moral, from a social justice perspective.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:44 am (UTC)long essay
Date: 2009-02-07 01:24 am (UTC)no really apart from his puritanical reactionary take on "the guitar lesson" a most agreeable read.
part of you must have been aware that "the guitar lesson"would scan as controversial,hell maybe it is but gee such a pretty tune..enchanting.
the tricky comparisons mmm not sure.
ps,what would todays momus make of the earnest/flippant guy who wrote the guitar lesson .
Re: long essay
Date: 2009-02-07 01:45 am (UTC)"I'm still earnest!" (he said flippantly).