Drama Queens and Text Fukkers
November 15th, 2008
Yesterday, as a part of the documentary film festival CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, the artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset presented their theatre/film piece Drama Queens (2007), where different well-known modernist and contemporary sculptures play the leading parts. The play starts with some quite distressed sculptures, not comfortable of being removed from the white cube and put on stage in the black box of the theatre.
During the 45 minute performance, the overtly fallic and quite angry Untitled (by Ulrich Rückriem) meets the somewhat depressed and sulky Walking man (by Giacometti), while the chatty girl Elegy III (by Barbara Hepworth) get a slight crush on Cloud Shepherd (by Jean Arp). The hipster Rabbit (by Jeff Koons) wants to disco, while Four Cubes (by Sol Le Witt) resites theoretical statements. Suddenly a Brillo box enters the scene and all agree that it is quite queer…
While Elmgreen and Dragset’s Drama Queens represents a funny take on the art historical discourse on sculpture – from modernist seriousness to postmodernist (neo)pop – the Norwegian artist group Text Fukkers (Marte Hodne Haugen, Marthe Wathinsen, Espen Lomsdalen) takes this several steps further in their fantastic performance-lecture on “Minimalism and the Rethoric of Power”. Enjoy! (and thanks to Claws Talks for the link)
November 16th, 2008 at 3:07
After some resistance, I made the DJ play Textfukkers at a party in Oslo today. I adore them. Minimalism.