Westbourne Studios, Acklam Road, London, Uk, 2004

Collaboration with Ania Bilon and ‘About7″

‘Interaction Through Disclosure, Culture Can Drive You Crazy’

By Mebrak TAREKE
London June 20, 2004

On that night I just found myself drifting through ‘Culture fatigue the show’04’ feeling completely unbothered by anything. It would only last from 8pm until 10 pm so I decided to get there early. Once I arrived all I could see were a whole lot of wooden paintings with sporadic smudges of ‘red head revenge’ female gentiles just strewn across the floor. There were clumps of people staring at them, in between sips of wine and clever conversations, wondering what to make of it all. After an unannounced thud Elena Ceccinato’s disheveled body was lying flat on the floor and completely still, on top of the stack of paintings. It all looked quite bizarre. Soon after, a string of morbid figures started to crawl through the crowd and towards the disarray of paintings. They all looked remarkably like a scene from Dante’s inferno, utterly self-absorbed in their neurotic movements yet in mournful synergy with one another. In between their screeches, slurs and silence a thick swath of desperate sadness was starting to caste itself over them. This certainly shocked the shit out of a bemused lot of tipsy trotters like myself who had probably never witnessed such graphic scenes of bedlam before. Then I realized, that this show was a clever satire of how exactly culture can drive us all crazy. It is something that gnaws away at us. It makes us feel like shit if we do or don’t buy into it. It never quite reveals itself but expects us to spawn of its subliminal do or die dictates. We are all confused by it and don’t really know what it means. But our modern ‘must haves’ mandate can’t do without it. ‘Culture Can Drive You Crazy’ certainly pushed me to my psychotic edge. It made me wonder why I am always busy trying to suss it all out.