Performance by Ei Arakawa in collaboration with Dan Poston, Stefan Tcherepnin
Ei Arakawa organizes site-specific performances, installations, and actions as part of a sprawling, collaborative practice. How To DISsappear in America: The Musical (2016) is based on a book with the same title by artist Seth Price. The adaptation of the work continues Arakawa’s practice of translating previous artistic works into musical form. Published in 2008, Price’s elliptical handbook alludes to 1960s countercultural guides but uses material taken almost entirely from the internet, updating methods of disappearance for the current digital (and highly surveilled) age. Developed in collaboration with writer Dan Poston and composer and artist Stefan Tcherepnin, the musical and installation form a lip sync performance using the pre-recorded voices of the performers—showing how shifts in context can reframe previous artworks to produce radically augmented meaning.
Courtesy Ei Arakawa; Dan Poston; Stefan Tcherepnin; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York; Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo
Thanks to Seth Price; The Leopard Press, New York
With the support of Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD; Japan Foundation