LG Williams Apologizes For Seven Hour Debauched Rampage!
This press release parodies the celebrity apology ritual by turning a seven-hour bicycle-and-beer escapade into a crisis of avant-garde governance. Williams resigns, temporarily, from leadership of the United States Avant-Garde Association as though art itself has been endangered by his failure to transfer power. The language is spectacularly excessive, moving through Duchampian aesthetics, Japanese condoms, wave patterns, imaginary beers, nudist organizations, and podium theatrics as if confession could never stop producing more incriminating form. Beneath the obscenity is a sharp diagnosis of public contrition: apology has become another performance of authority, appetite, and media control. The work is a debased moral pageant in which the artist's disgrace becomes the artwork's real engine.
- DATE:
- June 27, 2009
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Essay / Critique
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Dave Hickey; John Stinksign; Jenny Saypaugh; Marcel Duchamp; Arjuna; Elvis Presley
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- Artforum; United States Avant-Garde Association; Black Point; Honolulu
- KEYWORDS:
- seven-hour bicycle-beer escapade; celebrity apology ritualized; Duchampian aesthetics invoked then mocked; avant-garde governance crisis; disgrace as artwork engine; apology as performance of authority; temporary resignation as medium