John Bock

Antonin Artaud und die Pest, 2005

Mixed media installation and single-channel video projection
Dimensions site specific, video: 14 min 29 sec
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

Since the early 1990s John Bock has attracted attention with his unpredictable performances, blurring artistic convention, constructing a boundless world all his own in which he reflects on and examines a range of social, political, philosophical, and aesthetic interests. He has developed over time increasingly complex, large-scale installations in which he employs simple everyday objects and materials like wood, fabric, wire, cotton wadding, toothpaste, shaving cream, cleaning products, and food, which he treats and combines in unusual ways. They serve as props for his actions and then he leaves them in the exhibition space. The medium of video has frequently played a role as well: the artist documented his actions with a camera and integrated the resulting video into his installations or parts of his live performances are presented cinematically. Antonin Artaud und die Pest (Antonin Artaud and the Plague) refers to “The Theatre and the Plague,” a lecture held by Antonin Artaud on April 6, 1933 at a schoolroom of the Sorbonne. To the audience’s disapproval and outrage he chose not to talk about the proposed topic of “The Theatre and the Plague” but instead to act out “dying by a plague.” Artaud to Anais Nïn: “They always want to hear about; they want to hear an objective conference on ‘The Theater and the Plague,’ I want to give them the experience itself, the plague itself, so they will be terrified, and awaken. I want to awaken them. Because they do not realize they are dead. Their death is total, like deafness and blindness. This is agony I portrayed. Mine yes, and everyone who is alive.”

John Bock, *1965 Gribbohm, Germany