| Title or content of the project: EUROPEAN SOUVENIR |
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Artist(s) / Organization(s): GIROLAMO MARRI
Media(s): Performance
Date: 2008-10-13
Venue(s): Downtown areas in Shanghai |
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Description:
The performance should take place during rush hour in a very busy spot of a commercial area in Shanghai. The artist will be lying on the ground and a steward/stewardess will invite people walking by to stop for a minute and let a photographer take 2 Polaroid pictures as they pose standing on or sitting on the artist. One of the pictures will be given to them and the other will be put on display for people to look at on that day and later used for the video installation.
The concept of the work derives from the idea of the economically rising East having an opportunity to seek revenge on demising Western imperialism.
Positions and roles are now being redefined and westerners are reacting in contradictory ways. On the one hand their attitude is defensive and protectionist, on the other they are shamelessly promoting themselves as champions of an equalitarian, fruitful and benevolent friendship, seemingly oblivious of their imperialist and colonialist past, or of their more recent economical monopoly.
As an artist, free from the boundaries of moderation, and allowing himself to take an extreme position, Girolamo feels the urge to expose this undignified attitude and test the limits of a global behaviour on the smaller, human scale. His theory being that a friendship offered on the basis of fear and guilt, thus offered with no restriction whatsoever, cannot prompt anything but sadism and mockery. |
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