A written text, as well as a Audio version in which a speaker calmly performs a rendition of the text which consists of a succession of terse, matter-of-fact one-sentence descriptions of performances and actions by famous artists. Each sentence beginning with the first-person pronoun ‘I’, giving the impression that the speaker's admission of responsibility is both a confession and a boast.
The work has been exhibited as lecture performance at Kunsthalle Basel, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Austrian Cultural Forum Praha and as audio work at Bluecoat (Liverpool) and Arquipélago (Ribeira).
I cleaned the street. I cleaned and disinfected a street corner. I highly polished a subway rail. I paint balustrades in public space. I weed traffic islands. I clean street signs. I refurbish zebra crossings with white paint. I cleaned a public trash can. I restore holes in house walls with Lego stones. I plant trees in front of advertising panels. I also plant trees in front of advertising panels. I cleaned the square in front of a museum. I brushed my teeth on the street. I brushed my teeth on the street and washed my hair in a fountain. I went swimming in the fountain of a shopping center. I place my sofa on a public square for common use. I shit in a public square. I filled my own shit into tins. I jumped into a drain and walked through the city wearing my stinking clothes. I collected all the dog-doos that I found in the city. I decorate dog-doos with sweets. I secretly put sweets in people’s pockets. I decorate waste on the street with a ribbon. I collect broken objects from the street, fix them, and put them back to the place where I found them. I walk around with magnetic shoes, so that small metal pieces stick to them. I also walked around with magnetic shoes. I walk over parking cars. I walked over Brooklyn Bridge on its railing. I walked 125 kilometers without sleep. I walked, wearing a white tuxedo, through a slum in Kenia. I walked with a boom-box through the city and replayed fictive advertisements. I carried a bucket of water through the city for the entire day. I carried a hand of sand through the city for the entire day. I pushed a block of ice through the city until it was completely melted. I pulled a sand stone through the city until it was completely abraded. I pulled a boat through the dessert. I did a walk through the Harz mountains and orientated myself with a map of London. I swam along the entire Mississippi. I also swam along the entire Mississippi. I walk on a straight line eastwards. I am diving through Europe. I illegally passed the border between the USA and Mexico in a surfboard box. I cross borders without my papers at places that are not controlled. I staged a front crash of a German and a Polish car on a German-Polish border crossing. I walked with a double-Honecker through East Berlin. I dressed up as an SS soldier at the Cologne carnival and did the Hitler salute. I dressed up as a soldier and robbed through the city. I dressed up as a general and tried to hitchhike. I dressed up as a Bulgarian policeman and regulated the traffic. I dressed up as Snow White and tried to enter Disneyland but they didn‘t let me in. I wore a new Hugo Boss suit and went hiking in Sweden for several weeks without changing the suit. I wore a pair of tights over my head and went shopping. I dressed up with a robber mask and got myself a portray from a street artist. I also dressed up with a robber mask and got myself a portrait from a street artist. I tattoo people on the street without any experience in tattooing. I cut my coat into two pieces and wear one piece each day for one year. I cut salami slices into squares and place them on paving stones. I wear only clothes that have all the same color. I fixed the thread of my wool sweater in my apartment and went for a walk, so that the sweater slowly dissolved. I removed the white lint from strangers’ clothing without comment. I wore a suit plastered with seeds and placed myself in a public square spread full of pigeons. I sewed a dress out of old fish and walked through the city. I soaked my clothes in a broth of vinegar, milk, cod liver oil, and eggs and wore them for the entire day. I tried to sell the clothes that I‘m wearing on the street. I wore a suit and asked a less well-dressed pedestrian to change clothes with me; this principle I repeated until I ended up with the rags of an homeless. I invited a beggar from Mexico, who earns his money by guarding cars, to a guided-tour in the Daimler factory in Germany. I pushed an old Volkswagen Beetle through the streets of Wolfsburg. I crafted a Porsche 911 out of concrete and placed it in a parking spot. I mount police sirens on parked cars. I transform parked cars with stickers into police cars.
Lecture Performance (accompanied by Jiří Kovanda on the remote-controlled car), Fauxenthicity, Austrian Cultural Forum Praha, 2019.
I ordered hundreds of taxis in the same place in the city center. I put wrong speed limits on road signs. I put barriers and fences in pedestrian zones. I blew up a huge balloon in the subway during rush hour. I dropped buttermilk in front of supermarkets. I dropped cans with white paint on the street. I asked friends to drop things and to write a report about it. I dropped a car on the ground. I dropped a vase from the Han dynasty. I dropped a small red flower out of my apartment on the street. I left a set of blank keys on the street. I lift out and exchange manhole covers. I wrote the newspaper headlines on zebra crossings. I wrote with oil, the word “Oil“ on the water in the bay of San Francisco. I kicked a book about Lenin across the Red Square. I shoot on books, cut them into pieces, and burn them. I wrote a book without any word that contains an “e”. I printed Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” without any words, so that only the punctuation marks remain. I ordered Foucault’s “The order of things” alphabetically. I ordered Franz Kafka’s novel “The Metamorphosis” alphabetically. I ordered James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” alphabetically. I ordered the last speech by Malcolm X alphabetically. I ordered the Bible alphabetically. I got an ISBN number and tattooed it on my body. I mess up bookstores by changing the positions of books. I mess up libraries by changing the positions of books. I smuggled my own books into libraries. I hide my drawings in library books. I make drawings in stationery shops on the papers that are used for testing pens. I collect the papers from stationery shops on which people tested pens. I place my photographs in the picture frames in furniture stores. I showed my private video on a television in an electronics store. I also showed my private video in an electronics store. I build sculptures in the aisles of hardware stores with the materials that I find there. I smuggled a chocolate Santa Clause at Easter time into the supermarket and purchased it again. I only purchase products that have all the same color. I take a soap out of its packaging, put it in my pocket, and buy the empty package. I made a soap out of the fat sucked out of Silvio Berlusconi. I jump into peoples’ shopping carts and ask: “May I get a ride?” I say to a cashier: “You have beautiful hands.” I exchanged, unnoticed, products between Aldi and Lidl. I also exchanged products between supermarkets. I shoot the products that I want to purchase with bow and arrow. I buy a shirt at H&M, exchange a button with a slightly different one, and return the shirt. I buy toys, modify them slightly, and return them. I printed political messages on returnable Coca Cola glass bottles. I stand with a sign in the city; the sign says “I am lonely”. I stand with a sign on the road and hitchhike; the sign says “Nowhere”. I stand with a sign on the street; the sign says “Don‘t throw away the superfluous thoughts”. I stand with a sign on the street; the sign says “I want to become a millionaire”. I stand with a sign in the city; the sign says “I am a man”. I walk with a sign through the city; the sign says “I‘m looking for nobody”. I stand with a sign at the arrivals of an airport; the sign says “Pablo Picasso”. I purchase the signs from beggars. I organized a demonstration with blank signs. I demonstrate with your message on the street. I ask people to formulate a radical thought. I wrote instructions for a bank robbery. I threw a few hundred one-dollar notes from the visitors’ gallery to the brokers at the New York Stock Exchange. I directed a play in front of surveillance cameras. I kidnapped a city tour bus. I threatened to kidnap a museum director. I kidnapped a candidate for the California governorship during the election campaign. I break into houses and build sculptures out of furniture. I break into houses and steal an egg. I plant small trees on other people’s private properties. I attack famous people with cream cakes. I attacked a French warship with a model boat. I walked with a loaded revolver in the streets of Mexico City. I walked with a machine gun in the streets of Belgrade. I asked strangers if I could frisk them. I build firearms. I build non-functional land mines and place them in parks. I gild landmines and offer them as an investment. I disarm toys. I equip toys with weapons. I slapped Mickey Mouse in Disneyland. I stole various things from stores and exhibited them. I also stole various things and exhibited them. I steal the works of other artists from their exhibitions. I stole the work from other artists from their exhibitions and placed them in my own show. I also steal works from artists and put them in my show. I steal small parts of works by other artists and create miniature exhibitions of the artists. I advertised a job for an art thief in a newspaper. I stole the painting “The Poor Poet” by Carl Spitzweg from the Berlin National Gallery and hang it in the living room of a Turkish family. I take pictures down from the museum walls and place them on the floor. I stole hubcaps from cars. I have stolen 120 car radios. I stole clothes from C&A. I smuggled joints in a model airplane across a border. I smuggled cocaine in a Hugo Chavez-doll across the border. I smuggled bull sperm in a tuned motorcycle to Cuba. I tore a chicken. I cut off a chicken’s head. I chained dogs in front of a museum. I leashed a stray dog in a gallery and gave neither food nor water to the animal. I put sheep inside a museum. I put a fox inside a museum. I put a cat and a mouse inside a museum. I put horses inside a gallery. I put a gold fish inside a washing machine. I put a goldfish inside a blender filled with water. I tattoo pigs. I tried to teach barking to a bird. I gave a concert for cows. I gave a concert for a melon. I design dresses for road-kill animals. I cook meals out of human meat and eat it. I ate the corpse of a stillbirth. I concrete a dead fetus in a concrete cube. I wiped the floor with the blood of murdered people. I had sex with the corpse of a dead woman; then I castrated myself. I offer heroin to addicted people for tattooing them a line across their backs. I let someone shoot in my arm. I chopped my right hand. I asked a knife thrower to throw knives at me. I offered people to throw darts at me and rewarded each hit with 500 Euros. I pushed a nail through my hand. I made blood sausages from my own blood. I also made blood sausages from my own blood. I got a rib removed. I burned down a temple in order to get famous. I peed on Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. I also peed on Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. I tried to smash Duchamp’s “Fountain” with a hammer. I put black ink in Damien Hirst’s “Sheep” and called it “Black Sheep”. I erased the drawing of another artist. I slept in Tracey Emin’s “My Bed”. I sprayed over a Mondrian painting.
Lecture Performance (performed by Hans-Peter Anschütz), Kunsthalle Basel, 2011.