Dan T

Costume for a script for an unproduced puppet show 2015

A black-clad man stands in a plywood structure resembling a pillory and reads the script of a puppet show about proxy bodies, ninjas, knights, invisibility and non-existence. He reads quickly, articulating all formatting and punctuation. This takes 25 minutes and is performed in front of about 40 seated people.

I wrote this text intermittently over two years, originally structuring it as a puppet show, then an essay, and finally this performance. The pillory was made relatively late in the process and came from a broader body of figurative and anthropomorphic sculptures which visually referenced juridical and penal furniture.

The work was intended to perform and critique what the text refers to as "the tyrannical control of the artist", specifically regarding the observation and representation of bodies. It wasn't conceptually necessary for the person performing it to be me but it became practically necessary as it was painful to perform.

(not) 2013

An object resembling a chair with a malaysian ply base and birch ply seat and back rest. The seat's centre is punctured by the base. A rectangular malaysian ply rod protrudes vertically, higher than the backrest. The chair's design is modernist but its construction is rickety: it resembles a prototype.

I had been drawing chairs that penetrated themselves for a while with the intention of printing one of the drawings on a duvet cover. One morning I interrupted my drawing and abruptly went into the workshop and made this one without really thinking. It took about three hours.

(not) has the alibi of aggravating the boundary between sculpture and furniture: a chair that is not one. The duvet cover plan betrays the fact that I always intended to sexualise this boundary, to eroticise the gaze that looks but doesn't touch. Physically and conceptually it is a knot.