Title: In Memoriam of an Anonymous Artist
Year: 2009
Medium:Performance
Materiales:Stolen idea, naked man, glass, water, urine
Length: Action repeated no less than 6 times per presentation
Statement
A man standing with his back to the exhibition wall begins to take off his clothes until he is naked. He takes a glass full of water and drinks it. He puts the empty glass in a position that would serve as a container where, almost immediately, he will pour his urine. Then he drinks the urine and immediately puts the empty glass again in place to receive the new urine that he drinks once more, giving the impression that the water has instantaneously traveled from his mouth to his penis. This is an action continuously repeated for about half an hour or 45 minutes.
The work is a piece the artist “stole” in the art school from a classmate who held this performance as part of a class exercise. The piece draws its inspiration from the story of all those who study art or want to be artists and have talent for it but, although trying with all their might, never get to be part of the mainstream of art circuits and much less of the history of art. Many of them stop practicing art after unsuccessful attempts. The piece criticizes the so-called “theft of ideas,” a recurrent practice by some rather well known artists who, exhausted or desperate, try to find new ideas in the production of younger artists. Inspired on, appropriated from, lent by, development of an idea by another artist are expressions only used and publicized when the work takes some element from better known authors. Otherwise, when the artists from whom the ideas are appropriated are less known, it is very infrequent that there is any form of acknowledgement, thus leaving the authors in anonymity and with no remuneration at all. This piece intends to be a tribute to “anonymous artists” who have been a source of inspiration and have not been acknowledged.
Exhibited
| 2009 | |
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Civilian Training. Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea Gallery. Turin, Italy November 7 |
Documentation
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Civilian Training
Turin, Italy
photos: Franco Soffiantino Arte Contamporanea
Selected Bibliography
(by alphabetical order)
Exibart “Bruguera / Fregni Nagler & Pietroiusti,” Exibart.com, November 9, 2009, Florence, Italy
Mazza, Lonrenzo “Tania Bruguera – Civilian Training,” Art|Blog.it, November 3, 2009, Milan, Italy
Torino+Piemonte|Contemporary Art “Civilian Training, un giro di campo,” Torino+Piemonte|Contemporary Art, November, 2009, Turin, Italy
UnDo.Net “Tania Bruguera – Cesare Pietroiusti / Linda Fregni Nagler,” Guida agli Eventi Culturali, November 7, 2009, Milano, Italy