EMBASSY presents
LEVEZ
VØS
SKINNY
FISTS
CØMME
ANTENNAS
TØ
HEAVEN
New Work by Alex Hetherington
16.10.10 - 31.10.10
Thursday Sunday
12-6pm
one
four
Windscreen 1
Cody M. Walker/Richard
Hoyt/Joe Sheridan/Clipper
Neptune/Thomas G. Plaskett/
Russell Ray, Jr./ Feu Thérèse.
two
Windscreen 2
A Standard Nomenclature for
Marbled Paper/Fat Malboro/
L.A. Tool & Die/Peaceable
Lake Rehabilitation Center/
Ibaraki Prefecture.
three
Belt
Lift yr skinny fist, Mark
Pullin, known as Mr Pearl,
lapping up the _____ &
Cocaine at Studio 54 _____
grease alloy, and Marguerite
Ida & Helena Annabel, VS.
adore Diana Dors, skinny boy/
rouge Skate’78 lips The Pina
Bausch sequence.
Two sheets
thick (framed
images)
1. Van Cleef and Arpels,
Boucheron, Chanel, Chopard,
De Beers, Dior, Cartier, H.
Stern, Theo Thenell, Vertu,
Harry Winston, Leviev,
Asprey.
2. “Chick” Austin/ gas, ass, or
grass, no one rides for free/
Satin Operator
3. The Eagle: Gold Standard
(hysteric, melancholic,
degraded, refined)
4. Peter Weir: From Picnic at
Hanging Rock to The Cars
That Ate Paris
five
Black Glass
Canadian Rain. in the video
projection canadian rain,
_______ (sic) appears against
a blank background wearing a
trench coat. her hair is blowing
in the wind. she executes a
series of stylized gestures
from an entirely invented
sign language to bring about
a/pluie canadienne/Robert
Saint George Dy’renforth
(1844–1910) was an American
soldier and lawyer.
six
seven
Street sign
Robert Opel/Caddo Nation of
Oklahoma/”The West is the
future”/Aaron Curry/Black
Inches.
3 editions
A completed screenplay by
Efrim Menuck plus celebrities
with Tourette’s or Epilepsy/
NTSC and PAL comparisons
Godspeed you Black Emperor
& Fluxus Whore
Van Cleef & Arpels (black) &
Crawl Worm!
eight
Gold Text
Placebo landscape. “Note that
I use the term ‘spelunker’ to
denote someone untrained and
unknowledgeable in current
exploration techniques, and
‘caver’ for those who are.”
Grotte des Faux-Monnayeurs,
Mouthiers-Haute-Pierre
(France).
nine
Apple Mac on
mirror
five
fou
“Charles Baudelaire Peint”,
1972/”Dites Partout Que Je
L’Ai Dit”, 1974/Pink No/Sissy
Spacek in Trash/Studflix/Steve
Jobs Suicide
two
six
one
t
sev
en
WØRKS
ni
ne
r
eigh
e
thre
Alex Hetherington would like to thank:
Sam Stead
Mick Reilly
Root Creative
Edinburgh Sculpture
Workshop
Lorna Shields
Premier Windscreens
Edinburgh
McRostie of Glasgow
Victor Boullet
Nathalie de Briey
Sara Sinclair
The Embassy Committee
SOME NOTES COMPILED
WHILE THINKING ABOUT ALEX
HETHERINGTON
~~BENJAMIN FALLON
…Johnny
Rotten
Begat Bruce LaBruce.
Bruce LaBruce Begat
Buck Angel. Buck
Angel Begat Dee Dee
Sharp. Dee Dee Sharp
Begat C.C Peniston.
C.C Peniston Begat
Pete Shelly…
~~from Sarah Winchester Made Me Hardcore, Print
edition by Alex Hetherington
Alex
Hetheringtons
practice
is rooted firmly within the milieu of
contemporary late capitalist culture.
Known
primarily
for
his
performative video works exploring notions
of identity and self through complex
appropriations and references to theatre,
literature, visual art, mass media and spam
emails.
works formed from
her response to these
audio works.
A violent remix of the world,
pulling in aspects of queer culture, high art,
mass production and the proliferation of
the image.
The resultant work acts in some way
as a spatial representation of the fragmented
self.
Does a society that
encourages
the
search for the real
self make us ‘aware of
our essential separate
unique identity’ or
does it afford us
practice in the acting
out
of
Siamesed
identities?
Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme ~~Hillel Schwartz - The culture of the Copy p.84
Antennas To Heaven marks a new step for
In this quote we find the root of
Hetherington in an installation in which
the problematic logic that lies at the heart
performance is hinted at but ultimately
of Hetheringtons practice. At once we are
denied.
told that to be ‘original’ and ‘real’ is the goal
A dead set in the best possible way. of our society however this task purely seeks
to underline the contradictions of a postConceived by Hetherington as :
romantic landscape.
a result of a dramatic
treatment or scripted
scenario
based
on the idea of the
German artist Isa
Genzken listening to
the Canadian band
Godspeed! You Black
Emperor and devising
In a society in which individuation
is presented as the foundation of meaning
Hetherington creates an inversion denying
the self and making open the process of the
construction of identity.
We know of no
people
without
names, no languages
or cultures in which
some
manner
of
distinctions between
self and other, we and
they, are not made .
. . Self-knowledge –
always a construction
no matter how much
it feels like a discovery
– is never altogether
separable from claims
to be known in specific
ways by others.
~~Manuel Castells - The Power of Identity
The construction of identity is
at best a fragile process in which we take
from the extant signifiers, an accretion of
references
Is this
performance?
not
the
root
of
all
A mask denying the inner self and
projecting an idealised representation?
Art shares the same fate, attempting
to break out of itself but fundamentally
dead.
Only possible
representation.
of
a
mute
Linda Levez Vos Elfriede Skinny Rosemarie Fists Jelinek Comme
Antennas Trockel to Fratianne Heaven
Rebecca Green and Chris McCann as Mr. And Mrs. Dempsey
This specially devised performance is a collective response to Alex
Hetherington’s Embassy installation and his recent film - Linda
Fratianne - made for the CCA. Using improvisation and a series of
spoken set texts it creates a bridge between disparate and abrasive
forms that explore conventions of performance, the object, glamour,
failure, combat, spectacle, defeat and scripted behaviour.
Alex Hetherington performance
31.10.10 7:15pm
Roxy hall
EMBASSY is an Edinburgh based non-profit
organisation for the promotion of contemporary
art run by a committee of volunteer directors:
- Luke Cooke-Yarborough
- Benjamin Fallon
- Alexa Hare
- Shona Macnaughton
- Francesca Nobilucci
- James Thomas Phillips
- Ashleigh Reid
EMBASSY is supported by:
EMBASSY GALLERY LTD is registered in
Scotland
Company Number:259872
Charity No. SC035780