The Philip Morris Project departs from a few appropriations such as Laurie Anderson’s ‘Born, Never Asked’ from her minimalist debut album – which originally came from a performance piece – and the Philip Morris propaganda associated with the cowboy image. It also bears references to the plastic images of Hollywood outdoors.
The Philip Morris Project was first meant as a research promo video for a choreographic theater performance that ended up taking some other direction. The Philip Morris Project is an experiment on the spectacle and theater power game.
CLICK on the image to check the video
“… the viewer lost his or her individuality to become a fragment of that amorphous entity called the “audience”. The viewer’s gaze became mediated or even humiliated, by the spectacular capacity of the artwork which relied more and more on its scale and time; scale in the case of monumental sculptures and time in the case of videos or film productions that demanded the attention of full length feature movies or documentaries. The viewer’s rhythmic experience was imposed by the time frame and dimensions of the show. The viewer’s eye did not depend on imagination, but on the relation of time and scale … Oblivious of his or her feet, the viewer floated in the atmosphere of the show’s theme.” Francesco Bonami, The Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
What turns the viewer into a member of an audience? What distinguishes the subject from the object in the theatrical space? On which side of the proscenium does reality take place? Which reality is more ‘real’? What is imagination? Who holds the power of imagination: the artist or the viewer? Is democracy really possible in the theatrical or artistic environment? Which place does the body relationship between the performer and the viewer have in the theatrical and artistic environments? These were a few of the questions that first triggered or that appeared as a reaction of this project.
