image: J. Roussel
Re-enacting Joseph Beuys’s piece ‘How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare’.
In the piece, Beuys held a dead hare, dressed in his orderly manner—beige explorer vest, white shirt, and hiking pants. His head was covered in honey and gold leaves. On his left shoe, an iron plate was attached with jute wire. His piece took three hours, and no one was able to enter the gallery, only to peek through the gallery windows to where he was doing this piece. Some sources (names I do not remember now) said that this piece was Beuys’ initiation of the shamanic figure he continued to develop afterwards.
My re-enactment of this monumental performance became a meditation on ‘How to Explain Ecological Despair to a Dead Tetraodontidae’—better known as a puffer fish. In place of Beuys’s dead hare, I held a spiky puffer fish whose sharp protrusions continually pierced my skin. And instead of honey and gold leaf, my entire head was coated in red clay that I collected with my brother this summer from the shores of the Baltic Sea.
In the piece, Beuys held a dead hare, dressed in his orderly manner—beige explorer vest, white shirt, and hiking pants. His head was covered in honey and gold leaves. On his left shoe, an iron plate was attached with jute wire. His piece took three hours, and no one was able to enter the gallery, only to peek through the gallery windows to where he was doing this piece. Some sources (names I do not remember now) said that this piece was Beuys’ initiation of the shamanic figure he continued to develop afterwards.
My re-enactment of this monumental performance became a meditation on ‘How to Explain Ecological Despair to a Dead Tetraodontidae’—better known as a puffer fish. In place of Beuys’s dead hare, I held a spiky puffer fish whose sharp protrusions continually pierced my skin. And instead of honey and gold leaf, my entire head was coated in red clay that I collected with my brother this summer from the shores of the Baltic Sea.
The performance was done in relation to a reflective text, ‘Toward a Clumsy Theory of Re-Enactments as Epistemic Compost’ published on ZANDBANK issue No. 2, where I talked about the idea of re-enactments and how this concept might appear in action.
2 hours
part of ZANDBANK No. 2 Launch, Walter’s Bookstore, Groningen
special thanks to: ZANDBANK crew (Michiel Teeuw, Dinnis Van Dijken, and Elisabetta Cuccaro
special thanks to: ZANDBANK crew (Michiel Teeuw, Dinnis Van Dijken, and Elisabetta Cuccaro
image: J. Roussel