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Friday, February 24, 2006

What Do We Want? Nothing!

Posted by on February 24 at 11:37 AM

Tonight the Henry Art Gallery is opening its two new shows, one an exhibition of mainly prints (with a few knockout paintings) by pop comics man Roy Lichtenstein, and the other a series of hysterical videos by the Toronto artist Kelly Mark. I’ll write more about Mark in a coming Stranger, but one of her pieces is a staged demonstration in Toronto in which protesters carry blank placards and shout stuff like, “What do we want? Nothing! When do we want it? Whenever!”

The cool thing is that the Henry decided yesterday it wanted to do its own version of the nothingness demonstration, so Seattleites will become part of Mark’s work. Tonight, starting at 7:45 pm, the Henry and Mark are staging a performance of Demonstration outside the gallery, during the opening. If you want to take part, e-mail betsey@henryart.org. You’ll have to arrive at the Henry at 7:30 pm, and the demonstration will last until 8:45, at which point you can go into the opening party for free and drink the wine. If I didn’t have unchangeable plans with smashing friends, I’d be all over it myself.


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holy. shit.

My favorite piece of Canadian performance art was when Vincent Trasov ran for mayor of Vancouver as Mr. Peanut. The campaign platform was P for performance, E for elegance, A for art, N for nonsense, U for uniqueness and T for talent. William Burroughs visited Vancouver and made a formal endorsement of the candidate "I would like to take this opportunity to endorse the candidacy of Mr. Peanut for mayor of Vancouver. Mr. Peanut is running on an art platform, and art is the creation of illusion. Since the inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insoluble problems, it is now time for illusion to take over. And there can only be one illogical candidate Mr. Peanut." At final counting of the ballots Trasov received 2,685 votes for 3.4% of the vote.

It gets better... "Mr. Peanut managed to make his statement at the [candidates'] meeting by posing a 'visual question' to the other candidates during the question period. A retinue of his followers, including pretty girls in leotards and a band with kazoos disguised as leopard-skin covered saxophones, marched down the aisle of the auditorium… The girls flashed glittering letters spelling out Mr. Peanut's name while singing 'Peanuts from Heaven' along with the band. Mr. Peanut did a little tap-dance at the end, but did not explain what his 'visual question' meant."

remember the flash mob "craze" of 2004? There was a nothing protest that summer at Westlake Center. Hilarious how that sort of thing made it onto the evening news.

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