Tim Etchells: P.S. 122

While not exactly a gymnasium or a genre per se the lecture-performance has a history all its hold that is just beginning to be examined for its possess merits. Recent practitioners in the art adjoining matter range from Andrea Fraser to Walid Raad; earlier iterations include Robert Morris's 2131964 in which the artist lip-synched to a projection of Erwin Panofsky delivering his prelections on Studies in Iconology; Bernar Venet's invitations (1967-71) to skilfuls to present lectures in a range of subdues to accompany his own painted scientific diagrams; and Joseph Beuys's famously engaging lecture-actions. for the greatest part practiced by artists who also do other things, prelections often serve to query not single what the artists are doing on the other hand also topical subject matter and artistic practice, like reality versus mediation or interdisciplinarity. Implied in the course of performing is the question Is this a real discourse or am I faking it? No performer wait fors viewer feedback as such, although there is a faculty of perception that a process of self-discovery unravels in the telling.

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Tim Etchells's solo performance, Instructions for Forgetting, was more in the turn of expression of a graduate seminar than a prelection per se. Seated at a table and make straighted in street clothes, Etchells began with an explanation of the construction behind the work that also functioned as a description of what was to come: "I ask my friends to project stories and videotapes. For the stories, I ask for things that are veritable The topics can be anything. I ask for short reports upon things that have happened in the world. For the tapes I say, 'Don't make me anything special--send what you have.' I say, 'I'm assured whatever you choose is confine to be right.'" Between reading parts aloud from letters and starting and stopping videotapes, which played upon three monitors at the brow center, and rear of the stage, Etchells said these words several times during the one-hundred-minute performance, almost as a way of limiting viewer expectations. Remember (he appear to beed to be saying), this is a work of reality, not fiction. The alphabetic characters from friends--"Dear Tim, In the extreme point I moved out of the house. It was too big and I was too lonely"--are just as they've been described; the videos--which include a clip of Etchells's young son retelling the sinking of the Titanic through biting into a cookie and another showing English soccer star and poseur George Best--were made for frolic not art. The points Etchells made about sincerity and verity were well taken. solitary the title suggested the possibility of metaphoric afterthought, hinting that meaning might rise from the juxtaposition of ordinary narratives.

Colloquial language as the link between audience and performer has been the modus operandi of the much-heralded British performance clump Forced Entertainment since its founding by means of Etchells and five fellow art and theater pupils in Sheffield, England, in 1984 Highly skilled at connecting with viewers (most photographs present to view the performers in a file facing the audience squarely) via everyday bring under rule matter--whether it be the latest freshs from Downing Street or British television shows--they usually hold their audiences absorbed, often with a defiant lack of theatricality, sometimes for hours upon end. This solo made fewer demands upon the audience but nevertheless serv as a pointed introduction to the etho and mode of expression of Forced Entertainment as a whole.

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