Press Release

Catherine Sullivan
‘Tis Pity She’s a Fluxus Whore, 2003
1st - 29 April 2005


John Ford, considered by critics as one of the last great playwrights of the English Renaissance, published ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore in 1633. The play tells the dramatically ending story of the relationship between Giovanni and his sister Annabella. Catherine Sullivan references the play’s 1943 production featuring “Chick” Austin as Giovanni. Sullivan concentrates precisely on this presentation at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut where Austin was also director. The contents of the play (incest, murder) and its presentation’s context (World War II) were considered scandalous and resulted in Austin being asked to leave the Wadsworth.

The play’s 1943 production is put into contact with a series of performances presented in 1964 at the auditorium of the Technical School in Aachen (the Audimax Project, 20 July 1964) during a Fluxus Festival which featured Bazon Brock, Ludwig Gosewitz, Erik Andersen, Arthur Koepcke, Robert Filliou, Wolf Vostell and Joseph Beuys. This event coincided with the twentieth anniversary of the call to resistance by the Germans against Hitler. Several of the artists seized the occasion to evoke this historic date in their work. The event’s tension reached its climax when Beuys was punched in the face but without interrupting his action, face bloodied, he continued, brandishing a crucifix in front of the public. The American artist considers this event as one of the key moments in avant-garde history and attempts to reconstruct the project in 2003 while associating it with the theatrical reference along with its main character.

The work ‘Tis Pity She’s a Fluxus Whore is composed of two videos (filmed on 16mm and transferred to DVD) presented as a diptych. Filmed in the original presentations’ two locations (Hartford on the left screen and Aachen on the right), one sole actor incarnates all of the characters by means of poses and costumes.

The work evolves with each presentation. Photographs or objects having to do with Fluxus may be added (for example, photograms of objects, Brechts’ chairs, or photographs taken during the film’s shooting).

At Magasin d’en Face, the videos are shown on monitors with a series of 18 color photographs. The Potential Interlocutor (2003) shows details of graffiti found on the wooden chairs and writing tablets in the Audimax in Aachen. For the artist, a potential audience for these new performances is thus proposed.