Advertisement poster-changers each with six connecting line-drawings.

I’ll be hosting the Clifford Irving Show at Cine 13 in Paris coming Thursday (18.06.2009).

Attended by Ayreen Anastas, Rachelle Bonders, Goda Budvytytè, Geoffrey Carey, Alex Cecchetti, Audrey Cottin, Gintaras Didziapetris, Mai Abu Eldahab, Aurélien Froment, Rene Gabri, Dora Garcia, Mark Geffriaud, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, William Holden, Will Holder, Byung Chul Kim, Gabriel Lester, Kobe Matthys, Nicholas Matranga & Francesca Bennett, Olga, Alain Rondest, Benoit Rosemont, Ellen LeBlond Schrader, Benjamin Seror,
Snowden Snowden, Lee Welch

Curated by Raimundas Malasauskas

“Where do authors go when characters interrupt the story?” is the inscription at the heart of the Clifford Irving Show taking place at Cine 13, the renowned Paris theater in Montmartre, on the occasion of the second edition of Irving’s autobiography. The one-night-only live variety show is dedicated to the arts’ involvement in life-writing at large and will star a variety of stories, performances, characters and audiences. Conceived as a space of shaken expectations and dramatically-treated expertise, it will be an adventure for both characters and authors. Rather than focusing on a singular figure of the eponymous writer, Clifford Irving Show will illuminate possibilities of collective subjectivity lying in The Autobiography of Any One Being Including Every One Before, a new story that has recently written itself.

Since the publication of his Autobiography of Howard Hughes in 1972, Clifford Irving’s life has been nothing but adventure. That book was an unauthorized biography of the eccentric aviator and film director Howard Hughes (1905-1976), an American tycoon billionaire who died in 1976, after living in reclusion the last years of his life. The autobiography, a creative concoction of Clifford Irving and his conspirator Dick Suskind, caused a scandal when the reclusive Hughes declared it a hoax, leading to the imprisonment of the authors. The magic of ghost-writing was interrupted, but nevertheless kept life-writing intact: Clifford Irving has written several books since and was played by Richard Gere in The Hoax (2007). According to Gere, what Clifford Irving did to Hughes was an artwork.

“Not every part of an adventure is fun, but on the whole it’s a lot more life-affirming than sitting on your ass at a desk stringing words together,” admitted Clifford Irving in a recent interview to Paul Maliszewski. When asked about motives to “fake” the autobiography of Hughes the writer responded somewhat agnostically, “You may look for motive in an act, but only after the act has been committed. Any further answer concerning motive would be faked by me.”

Fakes. Impostures. Hoaxes. Illusion of expertise. Magic. Value of art. Doubles. Re-makings. Multiple narratives. These are also the subjects of Orson Welles‘ 1974 film F for Fake, partially based on the footage by French documentary filmmaker Francois Reichenbach, which is accompanied by Michel Legrand’s tune. Whether Clifford Irving plays himself in the film or not remains a question. Last year it was partially answered during in the launch of Phantom Rosebuds, a new Clifford Irving autobiography, published by Dexter Sinister. Titled Clifford Irving Show the event took place on the roof of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in L.A and New Langtons art space
in San Francisco.

When suddenly and unexpectedly clouds of hellium baloons, carried by two San Francisco architects, arrived on stage at New Langtons—leaving the audience, MC Gabriel Lester and magician Michael Stroud dazzled—the story got interrupted, but certainly precluded the upcoming one in Paris. Starring the same MC, yet drawing on the stage acts of new guests, it will inevitably entertain further questions like “Does it necessarily mean that when characters interrupt the story they start playing themselves? ” Or “Do we always arrive at Clifford Irving Show when we leap beyond the dichotomy of fake
and authentic?”

Like the inscription of the new autobiography (published by Dexter Sinister again) coming true: “Dedicated to everyone from whom I have learned.”

Organised by Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp

Supported by Culture Ireland

ONE-NIGHT-ONLY IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH

More info:
www.rye.tw

This over-the-top drive-by animation was made for a series of public sculptures that were never realized. At the time I was working together with Bert De Munck, who comissioned someone to make this animation after a design we had been working on.

Short film I made for children TV program called ‘Big art for Small People’.