M HKA Ensembles

Performance

Collection: Courtesy Kunsthaus Zürich Collection.

The piece adopts the format of a lecture with a whiteboard included. Its peculiarity is that the performer(s) experiences ‘transformations’ and ‘gets under the skin’ of the toothless artists spoken of in the script, imitating their voices and bodily postures. What the three portrayed artists—Jack Smith, Lenny Bruce and Antonin Artaud—had in common was the lamentable state of their teeth, as well as having ‘changed the course’ of, respectively, underground cinema, stand-up comedy, theatre, art and psychiatry. These fundamental artists submerge us in another of the great questions: Is art an effective medium for changing reality? Or to put it more exactly: Are artists dangerous for the status quo? The text examines the complexity of issues related to censorship, the involvement of artists with their audience and the meaning of the mainstream and marginality.

First performed at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010)