Smashing
2004
Video, 00:92:00.
Materials:
Collection: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Michel Rein, Paris (Inv. no. AMVP 3253).
Wearing a suit, Jimmie Durham sits behind a desk like a bureaucrat performing his duty: smashing things. In an orderly manner, a person goes in, delivers an object, Durham smashes it with a prehistoric stone stool - violently but impassively. He stamps and signs a piece of paper as receipt and gives it to the same person, who goes off-scene. The same order of events is repeated several times during 92 minutes.
This video-performance was part of Durham’s teaching residency at Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy, in 2004.
