Sunday, July 18, 2010. Having attended Pablo Helguera's performance at Smack Mellon yesterday - The Art World Home Companion - I wanted to include something that encapsulated his humorous, ironic world view. Hence this Artoon. More of them can be found here.

As to the Home Companion, it is, in the words of its creator,

a radio program originally conceived for Condensations of the Social, an exhibition at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, curated by Sara Reisman in June-July of 2010. The project pays tribute to Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, adapting the concept for the contemporary art community. The “Estheticist” segment of the program invites public participation and offers a counseling and answering of art-related questions from listeners, in the spirit of Randy Cohen’s New York Times column “the Ethicist”.

Theatrum Anatomicum (and other Performance Lectures), Pablo Helguera, published by Jorge Pinto Books

BOOK LAUNCH: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 8PM
THE BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY
225 West Broadway
(as part of Edifying, a series of performative lectures curated by Beatrice Gross)

“If you have ever felt trapped amidst a boring lecture, this book has been made for you”.

Over the last few years, from the bars in Brooklyn to the stages of highbrow European museums, a now ubiquitous mode of lecturing is proliferating. It is known as “performance lecture”, referring to an academic presentation delivered by an artist that often turns into a spectacle and is usually accompanied by satire and irreverence. Despite the fact that this entertaining and experimental practice is now a familiar part of the life of artists communities around the world, few are recorded or survive beyond their presentation. Fortunately, Pablo Helguera, one of its most assiduous practitioners, has reunited a group of his performance texts to create what may well be the first anthology ever made of this genre.