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2004 "Temporary Tenant - Real(ty) Dreams", Hong Kong

Photographer: Roy Lee

On October 12, 2004, I rented a shop for one day in Lee Tung Street, better known as Wedding Card Street, in the Wanchai district, at the cost of HK$500.

I had nothing to sell.

The open and yet empty shop functioned as an anomaly, a phenomenon that passers-by couldn’t classify, as it challenged common-sense notions of capital valorization. The apparent absence of any utilitarian purpose could only be explained as an act of madness, a subversion of the unspoken rule of maximization of space for economic gain.

I just stood and sat in the shop, wearing a wig.

The next day the shop started selling shoes, a cheap consignment from a factory across the border. Under such conditions of acceleration and disappearance, the uncanny apparition took on the quality of a ghost, a figure always outpacing our awareness of it.

A few streets away, in the same neighbourhood, South-East Asian immigrants appear and disappear every night, women on a tourist visa sell their bodies, in Hong Kong they are worth more than in their countries, the prostitution of space becomes one with the space of prostitution. The global flows of capital, goods and labour all contribute to the hallucinatory character of the Hong Kong cityscape, which is inextricably linked to the speed of such flows. Disappearance becomes a consequence of speed as Ackbar Abbas noted. The speed of circulation and valorization of capital. The same logic that underpins the way urban space is written, erased, written over.

2000 "Singen. Welches?", Hier, Da und Dort, Singen, Germany

"Singen. Welches?" is the title of an on-line project I realized in the context of the international public art exhibition "Hier, Da und Dort", held in the German city of Singen between April and November 2000.

As art is called upon to play an increasingly crucial role in complex aestheticization processes - many of which involve urban space - and art events such as "Hier, Da und Dort" are devised to fuel the city's symbolic economy, I took the rather unorthodox decision of allocating my budget to an act of electronic disturbance aimed at altering geographic information and sabotaging the use of art for place promotion - the international art show in question was meant to underpin Singen's aspiration to feature on the art world map, revamp its image, and gloss over an embarrassing past.

By adding five spoof promotional websites to the existing one run by the municipality of Singen, I not only intended to raise awareness of how easily people can be duped into the falsehood of "everyday cybernetics", I also contributed to subvert Singen's strategy of place-marketing on the web.

Though the five virtual Singen I designed have no counterparts in the lifeworld, in the hyper-real (and often surreal) world of the web, where simulation has played havoc with our inherited epistemologies, the distinction between a "virtual real" city and a merely "virtual" city is suspended.

The official website of the "real" Singen is itself an example of place simulation. The city is described as being "situated by the lake of Konstanz", when in fact it is separated from the lake by a 5 mile-long industrial sprawl; the website provides a very partial account of the city's civic history, silently passing over the infamous forced labour camps that during WW II attracted investment from the rest of Germany and Switzerland; moreover, it fails to mention the presence of a very large immigrant population, and yet the so-called "guest workers" amount to one third of the overall population and contribute to Singen's economic wealth, social fabric and cultural life.

One of the distinctive features of the information age is the proliferation of data whose meaning becomes obscure. As information increases, meaning decreases, and with it our ability to make sense and distinguish between information, misinformation and disinformation. Now, how many Internet users have time to stop, think, compare and probe the mass of data intertextually and interactively in order to spot possible discrepancies? Not only has the Internet altered how we look at and explore geographic information, here the boundaries between image and reality, fact and fiction, are becoming increasingly blurred and often erased altogether.

Taking my cue from Guy Debord, who in "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle" hinted at a potentially subversive use of disinformation, a sort of homeopathic remedy that could counter the power of the integrated spectacle and foster incredulity towards its narratives, and appropriating another Situationist practice, that of détournement, theorized by Raoul Vaneigem, a parodic destabilization of the spectacle which involves taking elements from a given system to turn them against it, I initiated a proliferation of Singen homonyms on the Web. After registering the following domain names: singen.at (for Austria), singen.it (for Italy), singen-heidiland.ch (for Switzerland), singen.cz (for the Czech Republic), and singen.dk (for Denmark), I put on line five websites that would make the task of differentiating between a website which dissimulates something and websites which dissimulate that there is nothing almost impossible.

The choice of countries such as Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark and the Czech Republic was determined by the conscious attempt to produce what Roland Barthes described as a "reality effect": not only do these countries share borders with Germany, they also host German-speaking minorities, making the presence of the German toponym "Singen" highly plausible.

The websites I designed look similar to those run by many municipalities: they feature a historical profile of the city, tourist attractions and landmarks, a calendar of cultural or sport events, maps, transport information, and links to businesses such as hotels and restaurants.

These virtual Singen have very little "artistic added value"; they are decidedly different from artists' creations of utopian or dystopian environments, aesthetico-technical ideal cities, Simcities, 3-D representations of literary loci and so on. Instead, I chose to operate below the threshold of artistic visibility, so that my critical intervention could not be safely recuperated under the category of "art".

Though it is hard to assess the impact that the proliferation of Singen in cyberspace is having on the economy of the "real" Singen, it is now clear that the presence of six towns bearing the same name and located within a relatively small radius has proved baffling to some. I received hundreds of angry messages posted by those who drove for hours trying to locate one of these virtual Singen, while two municipalities (Vipiteno in Italy and Achen in Austria) claim that singen.it and singen.at provide misleading information to tourists visiting their regions and have started legal proceedings against the host of my sites.

PS. One year later I had to obscure these sites because neither I nor the webhost could afford the cost of a legal battle in court.

1997-2004 "Blimey!", Berlin, London, Rome, Graz, et al.

Blimey!, which literally means "God blind me", is an expression of surprise and/or alarm.

Those who took part in this project were offered blindfolding goggles and invited to take a walk in the city, relying on a partner for help.

How does the body intervene in the mapping of urban space once it is deprived of one of its senses? Would we ask our partner to replace our sight with a verbal description or would we silence her/him while lingering in a "mutilated" perception and enjoying it?

Idein, eidos, idea: the word “idea”, in its Greek genealogy, relates seeing to knowing. But what kind of knowledge comes through the eye? Is it trustworthy on the backdrop of generalized simulation?

Seeing without believing, believing without seeing. Which of our senses do we believe the most?

1997 “Wunschsammlung", Berlin- Frankfurt-Graz-Imola-Roma”

Ten stainless steel boxes, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Donald Judd’s polished artworks, were carried around for several days by “wish-collectors” in Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Graz, Imola and Rome.

A form of traveling public art, that is implicitly a critique of corporate public art, often imposed on the public in the form of monumental sculptures and spectacular, bureaucratic aestheticism.

In “Wunschsammlung” form doesn´t coincide with content, rather it creates a field of tension between the visible and the invisible. Wishes jotted down on paper and deposited in these boxes will never be read, content will remain forever hidden and elusive.

Meaning is created in the space of this fleeting encounter between strangers, with the box acting as a catalyst of the process.

1997 "Weather report", video-installation, De Appel, Amsterdam

Every 3-5 minutes three tv screens would be switched on by a timer and start playing random weather reports in different languages. This loud babel, an assault on people's senses, would last for about 30 seconds and then the tv-sets would be off again. I recorded these weather reports over a long period of time in various countries, and both their anachronism and geographical irrelevance were conceived as a cheeky response to those galleries and museums that exhibit works that were created and produced for a different context. My take on the globalization of contemporary art.

1997 " Monochromes", De Appel, Amsterdam

Invited to take part in a group show at De Appel museum in Amsterdam, I paid my homage to Kazimir Malevich, whose abstract paintings were at the centre of a dispute between his heirs and the Stedelijk Museum, accused of having obtained these paintings illegally.

The dispute had been widely publicized in Russia, but news of it hadn’t reached the rest of Europe yet. At that time I was artist-in-residence in Berlin, and had come into contact with a group of Russian artists among whom was Alexander Brener. Three months prior to my show in Amsterdam, Brener had been arrested for spraying a green dollar sign on one of the cross paintings at the centre of the dispute. Brener said he intended the dollar sign to appear nailed to the cross. He justified his ‘vandalic act ‘ as a performance against ‘corruption and commercialism in the art world’. At the time of my show at De Appel, he was still in prison, and nobody seemed interested in his fate, as most media had described him as a deranged man rather than an artist.

Though my project for De Appel wasn’t a comment on Brener’s performance, it addressed similar concerns.

I hung two monochrome paintings, behind which i concealed sensors attached to a dvd-player. Unlike what happens in museums, a sign invited people to touch the canvases, as if they were a touch-screen interface, and pose questions about anything. The electronically-controlled system would provide answers, just like an oracle. I had pre-recorded only three answers "Yes, No, Maybe", which were played randomly as soon as one asked a question and touched the canvas.

As art exhibitions increasingly tend to create a spectacular space, satisfying the demand for skin-deep entertainment and immediate, emotional gratifications, while maintaining and re-inforcing the auratic dimension of art through its inflated commercial value, I transformed abstract painting (the ultimate intellectual experience) into a funfair attraction that elicited an irrational, superstitious behaviour.

1997 "Abstract Tour Operator" Part 1: Schlossplatz, Part 2: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin

As an Abstract Tours agent operating from a portakabin placed in Schloßplatz, I offered tours based on geometric figures which participants were invited to draw on a map of Berlin with the help of Perspex stencils.

The superimposition of geometric figures (Euclidean abstraction) on a map (cartographic abstraction) mocked the conceptual abstractions that inform the configuration of spatial practices, such as architecture and city planning, the design of routes, the schematic grid of property lines and ultimately, the construction/ destruction of the Berlin Wall and the corporate reshaping of the German capital.

As in the Situationist practice of detournement, it entailed the capture of a code, not its imitation. It was inverse, not symmetrical. The process exposed, rather than concealed, an imposition created elsewhere in the political and economic field. A geometric route suppressed the dimensions of reality and also submitted to it. By following these abstract lines on the ground, and hence going through a process of de-familiarization and disorientation, participants could enrich the experience of their environment by overriding their habitual functional, relational, or historical perception of the city. The geometric routes established unfamiliar links, connecting places that have been fragmented, separated by the abstract production of space. Points, lines and areas established a different syntax of sites, based on chance. In order to follow your geometric route you had to trespass, jump over fences or ask strangers if you could pass through their apartments.

These unguided tours also fragmented totalizing representations of the city, opened up a plurality of perspectives which in turn produced provisional, transient, and partial perceptions and representations. Once these representations were assembled , the spaces of the city were incorporated into something closer to a fictional narrative than an objective record. By re-describing the city, they invented it.

The dérives encouraged by Abstract Tours functioned as an immaterial architecture of landscape. Walking became a primary act in the symbolic transformation of the territory, an instrument of knowledge. If we think of knowledge as process-based, rooted in 'corporeality’ and bodily practices, knowledge and practice become mutually interactive.

Starting as a linguistic metaphor, Abstract Tours revealed the obscenity of abstract space ‘on the ground’ - what occurs behind the façade - restoring a materialistic and critical dimension to the otherwise fetishistic experience of tourism

1996 "Radio Fiera", performance, Art Fair, Bologna

At home, with the help of a mixer, and a few friends I recorded a fake radio programme, based on the commercial radio service offered by department stores - a mix of easy-listening music, interviews with consumers and personalities, sales promotion etc. Then I distributed copies of the tape to several friends who had smuggled their ghetto blasters into the art fair and hidden them in various locations.

At a set time we started playing the tape and most visitors and exhibitors actually thought it was a broadcast offered by the art fair. The purpose of these audio-incursions was to bring attention to the commercial nature of the fair and the reduction of art to its crass and lowest common denominator. Listening to those fake interviews with collectors, artists, gallery owners now, more than 10 years later, makes them sound almost tasteful. Reality eventually surpasses fiction!

1996 "30 min. from the center", 4 videos, Care/Of, Milan

For the show ‘Mappe’, curated by Emanuela De Cecco, I realised four videos that were then shown simultaneously on four tv sets placed side by side.

The title refers to the time it takes from the very centre of Milan to the furthest tram stop.

I fixed my video camera on the rear window of four trams, going east, west, north and south, and recorded anything that entered into the visual field. I wanted to map the gradual transformation of the urban landscape, as one leaves the city centre, and its uniformity at a certain distance from the city centre. Not only do representations become the form in which (partial) knowledge of the urban environment is conveyed, but also as cognitive tools, they produce fresh perceptions and insights.
By selecting and creating linkages - here I used the trams as vectors, and recombined the visual texts by showing the videos synoptically - I hoped to produce not only ‘models of’ understanding, but also ‘models for ‘ understanding and enabling action.

We are in danger to lose all the specific character of different
 landscapes, move towards a uniformity of landscapes. We see many devastated landscapes, a sort of ‘junkspace’, which
have lost all attraction to their inhabitants - and to people from outside. Rich and diverse landscapes have a great social value.
The different character of landscapes make them valuable not only for tourists, but also for residents because they encourage a positive identification.

1995 "Der Messingkauf", Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan

For this one-person show I engaged the residents of the building where the gallery is located. I asked them to lend an object that they regarded as ‘art’ to the gallery, and fill a loan form that was exhibited next to it. In this loan form, which closely resembled a museum loan form, they wrote a brief description of the piece, provided title, name of the artist and size.

I involved and connected to the gallery a group of people that despite their proximity, were usually excluded from it, due to their socio-economic status and origin (many of them were recent immigrants).

The title "Der Messingkauf" was found in Bertolt Brecht's writings on theatre and relates to the inappropriateness of measuring everything in monetary terms. Who and what determines the value and meaning of an artwork?

As there was nothing for sale and the gallery functioned more as a space for developing social relations than anything else, I am extremely grateful to Emi Fontana for believing in this project and supporting it wholeheartedly.

1995 “Sound Project” for Aperto 95 (Stoppage, CCC, Tours, Villa Arson, Nice, Hotel Mama, Kunstraum, Vienna)

For this project I gave each curator (Liam Gillick for the French exhibitions and Peter Friedl for the Vienna show) a list of common French and Austrian names and a set of instructions. They were asked to find native speakers who would call out each name a few times, as if they were trying to draw the attention of a friend in a crowded room. These loud calls were recorded on a CD which was then played in the gallery.

I wanted to reach people randomly and yet individually to draw attention to the increasing use of marketing personalization. Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdung Effekt once again provided the inspiration.

1994 "Pat Groves", Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan

A blue suitcase left behind by a Belfast man. For this work I revisited the Dadaist tradition of the objet trouvè by offering for sale a 'suspicious object' that one could not own but only look after for an unspecified period of time. The suitcase was locked and the prospective buyer would have no idea of its content. This work would be sold on two conditions: that the suitcase must never be opened and that it must be returned to its owner if he came back to reclaim it.

Art (and) Trust. Would I trust the collector? Would the collector trust me? Art (and) Money. Would anybody buy an art work which might lose its material underpinning?

These soon became rhetorical questions, as nobody showed any interest in buying this piece.
As the Belfast man never showed up again, I decided to open the suitcase and satisfy my curiosity. Among his belongings was an air ticket showing that he had travelled from Belfast to Milan via Amsterdam, and several copies of An Phoblacht/Republican News.

1994 "Selected Biographies", International Sponsorship Programme for Young Artists, Cologne Art Fair

I asked 20 friends, from all walks of life, to write their biographies according to the format used by artists. I then displayed such information in the art fair stand that was offered to me as part of the Cologne Art Fair “International Sponshorship Programme”.

I intended to prove that any life history can be easily mythologized and made exceptional once it’s put on display according to the conventional modes used by museums, such as plexiglass sheets, wooden plinths, frames, screen projections, printed leaflets.

Despite the fact that no artworks were being shown or sold in my stand, visitors were led to believe that the information provided referred to established artists.

1994 "Controfigura", Castello di Rivoli, Turin

Invited to take part in the group show "Soggetto/Soggetto", at the Castello di Rivoli, a Museum of Contemporary Art near Turin, I used this invitation as a chance to rehearse my disappearance from the art scene.

Instead of producing a new work, which would have ended up in some private collection, and sold a few years later to buy the work of the next hot artist, I organised an audition to find my "body double", somebody who would pose as me, appear in public instead of me.

I was looking for a woman artist, who vaguely resembled me, willing to sign her works with my name, and take part in all the future exhibitions I would be invited to. After placing ads in national and local newspapers, seven women turned up for the audition, which was filmed by Susanna Schoenberg, but eventually none of them accepted the offer. Being a professional artist for the whole year wasn’t a very appealing prospect, once I briefed them on the nature of the job!

At that time contemporary artists such as Maurizio Cattelan and Vanessa Beecroft (included in the group exhibition at Castello di Rivoli) had started to feature in gossip magazines and talk shows and claimed a place in popular culture next to footballers, actors and other celebrities. The search of my body double was meant to draw attention to the toxic celebrity culture that goes hand in hand with the loss of meaning and the commodification of both art and artists. 

1993 "I reflect", Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan. Salzburg Kunstverein, et al.

As i started receiving invitations to take part in group shows across Europe, it became clear that I couldn’t send my existing works as they were either too site-specific or required my presence for their correct installation.

Out of necessity, and as a veiled criticism of large group shows whose only curatorial effort consisted in assembling young and hip artists, I created a passepartout, parasite installation - size variable according to the number of other artworks on display - which was entirely made of printed mirrors. Each mirror looked like a lined notebook, and my instructions to the gallerist or curator specified that they should be hung to reflect other artists’ works.

Both writing and looking at oneself in the mirror are relevant experiences in the formation of one's identity. My mirrors received between their lines both the viewer and the artworks displayed in the gallery and suggested the conflation of reading and writing. The reference to Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan was mainly lost on critics, exception made for the very clever Silvia Eiblmayer.

1993 "Nightmare", "UnFair" Special Projects, Cologne

During the first edition of the alternative art fair "UnFair", running alongside the more mainstream Art Fair held in Cologne, I created a space where kids could play with two jigsaw puzzles of Lucio Fontana and Freddy Krueger while their parents visited the fair. By playing with the master and the monster they would, maybe, learn how to play down their fears of both.

1993 "The master is a monster", Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan

Lucio Fontana (the master) and Freddy Krueger (the monster) were juxtaposed in an installation that featured video clips from the ‘Nightmare’ horror film series, b/w portraits, an underlined copy of Lucio Fontana’s private correspondence which i found in his Milanese archive, a ‘nightmare’ bedside table piece, and 16 waitress aprons tied together and printed with Fontana’s trademark cuts. The choice of aprons referred to my previous performance as a waitress and also to a male sexual fantasy.

The work of Fontana, the revered grand master of Italian Modernism, had never before been subjected to a feminist analysis. As I started moving my first steps in the Italian art system, I realised that with the exception of my new gallerist, Emi Fontana and Artforum critic, Francesca Pasini, very few people dared to question and challenge the macho attitudes that were still dominant in the art circles in which, for better or worse, I had to move.

I had recently returned to Italy after spending a few months in New York, and I found the conservatorism of Italian critical discourse very frustrating and stifling. This show reflected my desire to break free from the patronising and condescending protection usually offered by male critics and curators to young women artists in Italy. It certainly ruffled a few feathers and didn’t help my reputation: outspoken critics of the status quo usually find themselves marginalised.

By juxtaposing the high priest of Italian Modernism, a high-brow icon, and Freddy Krueger, a fictional villain and a mass culture icon, not only did I call into question the distinction between high and low culture, but also pointed out the symbolic implications of Fontana’s famous cuts. Fontana brandishing a knife and slashing his canvases took a completely new, and disturbing meaning when read against his corresponce with Tullio d’Albissola, letters in which he referred to his famous cuts as ‘cunts’ and the sharp glove with which Freddy Krueger slashes his victims

1992 "Inside/Outside" 3-min video, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Cairo + RAI 3

I made this video for a group show that took place in Egypt. I had never been to Egypt but many people from
that country emigrated to mine and I was aware of their plight by having taught Italian to new immigrants.

I was also aware of the deep-seated fear of the Other, the Stranger, that was creating the conditions for a resurgence of racism in Italian society. Anxiety is all too easily projected onto the figure of the foreigner, as the results of Italian elections clearly show.

In this video I intended to debunk the myth that underpins such fear: here the foreign immigrants are shown to be in a dangerous and unsafe environment, whereas locals are cocooned in their cars. The same scene is shot alternately from the inside and outside of a car, as its windscreen gets covered with soap and cleaned by Egyptian immigrants in Milan.

When shooting from the viewpoint of the driver the audio is off, he cannot hear the noise of traffic, nor see it, as this sight is obstructed by soap on the windscreen, he feels safe and protected in the car.

A few seconds later the camera moves behind the person leaning against the car and cleaning the windscreen. The audio is now on and amplifies the traffic noise, the camera angle shows the dangerous conditions in which immigrant men and children earn a living in the streets of Milan.

The alternate shots are dynamically juxtaposed during the editing, creating a dramatic effect.

1992 "Sindone", Castello di Rivara, Turin

Hundreds of used paper napkins stamped with FIAT car rims, litter the floor before the opening of a group show to suggest that the real party had already taken place, and left a big mess behind, FIAT-style, business as usual in the industrial area
around Turin, regarded as private property by the car manufacturer.

1992 "Sindone", Galleria Giorgio Persano, Turin

This was my first site-specific project, and engaged in a dialogue with the aesthetics of Arte Povera. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that the gallery that hosted my show was well-known for representing Arte Povera artists in the 80s and contributed to their commercial success.

I hung eight bedsheets printed with images of FIAT car rims, on washing lines, intended to be a tribute to the disappeared ‘body’ of the working class in Turin, once home to a Fiat car plant, the biggest car plant in Italy. The protests of laid-off factory workers and their families had been violently repressed, and had become a relic of the past, their memory was actively suppressed while the city tried to reinvent herself.

In order to recover such memory I made a tongue-in-cheek reference to one of the city’s most important tourist attractions, a relic called Sindone, ‘Holy Shroud’ in Italian, a bedsheet that Catholics believed wrapped the body of Christ. The industrial history of the city was being erased while a dubious relic was promoted as a must-see attraction in Turin.

1992 "Collection", Photography Biennial, Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona

I never thought of myself as a photographer, but when i got invited to take part in this photography biennial, I found the opportunity, unexpected and challenging, to reflect upon the traditional function of photography, not only its power to record, reproduce, and become an object in its own right, but also the relationship between photography and death, its capability of capturing, freezing a thing or person in a moment in time, lifting it from its becoming, making it still and immobile like death.

I certainly wasn’t the first person to associate photography and death, Roland Barthes describes photographers as "agents of Death", but closer to me was Christian Boltanski’s work, which I knew would be exhibited in the same show. That’s when I decided to engage in a dialogue with him. He is haunted by the problems of death, memory and loss; he often seeks to memorialize the anonymous and those who have disappeared.

So, rather than taking more photographs I decided to cut up hundreds of pictures I took in the past (dissecting the already dead !) and then distributed these cut-outs - mouths, eyes, ears, hands and noses - into five glass jars, one for each organ of the senses.

The spooky thing is that Cindy Sherman also chose to show pictures of body fragments in the same occasion. Although death wasn’t the theme of the biennial, the number of works dealing with it created an accidental leit motif unforeseen by the curator.

1991 "Wait For The Waitress" , Studio Guenzani, Milan.

For my first one-person show, which was also my first show in a commercial gallery, i divided the gallery space into two distinct areas: one, which included the gallerist’s office and the reception, was turned into a film set, although nobody was actually filming. The other, larger, exhibition area became a projection room.

I asked the gallery owner, Claudio Guenzani, to play the gallerist role, and placed 500-Watt quartz film lights in his office. By walking into his office critics and collectors found themselves under the same bright spotlights and became slightly self-conscious, as they suspected somebody might start filming them. Wearing a waitress uniform I stood behind the bar I set up in the reception area and served drinks throughout the opening. There was no indication that it was a performance; as this was my first appearance in the Milanese art scene, my identity could be easily disguised.

The exhibition room on the other hand was darkened with thick black curtains and one of the walls served as a screen for a floor-to-ceiling projection. It showed a picture I had taken at the opening of the American Pavillion during the 1990 Venice Biennial: a waiter and a waitress serving drinks. They were both Afro-Americans, a disturbing reinforcement of a racial stereotype. Those who walked into this room became part of the projection, no longer just innocent viewers, they found themselves cast into the role of white middle-class guests attended to by black waiters.

The soundtrack consisted of unauthorized recordings of all the openings I had attended during the previous year. Past comments and voices blended with present ones. Past openings became the object of the exhibition people had been invited to, creating a surreal loop of disjointed time. This show paid homage to Bertolt Brecht’s theatre theory, the Verfremdung Effekt in particular, and to Alain Robbe-Grillet, whose screenplay, Last Year in Marienbad, was on my bedside table at the time when I started thinking about my solo show at Studio Guenzani.