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| Optimum
Performance 2003 Performance at the Whitechapel Gallery documented as a single channel video (on DVD); colour, sound. 14.35 mins Commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Video production supported by Index Gallery and VET, London. |
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| Optimum Performance is a video documenting a performance piece of the same name created by the artist for the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Optimum Performance features an actor dressed as a businessman, who delivers a rousing but satirical motivational speech to the Whitechapel's gallery audience as if they are group of his own professional colleagues. Focussing particularly on the example of the Underwood typewriter company, references to the Duchampian tradition can be sensed within the speech that points to the interchange between the use-value and art-value of manufactured objects appropriated as readymades, and their context between art and everyday life. The piece has a self-reflexive core - a performance designed to enhance performance - but can be interpreted simultaneously as a functional tool designed to manipulate the abilities of the audience and as a subtle critique of the institutions and systems of the art world.
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Video still from Optimum Performance, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2003. Actor: Andrew Alston |
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