Behavioral Works
Francesc Torres
- Date:1975
- Edition/serial number:Unlimited
- Media description:Video (Digital Betacam and DVD)
- Duration:55 min. 12 sec.
- Colour:Black and white
- Sound:Sound
- Category: Video, Performance
- Entry date:2008
- Register number:AD05092
- Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York (http://www.eai.org)
This video work contains a compilation of various actions by the artist to do with his life history and the agents that have helped the formation of his identity. The actions include: a performance in which Francesc Torres talks with his reflection in the mirror, blaming it for all his failings; another in which he reads out to camera a series of sentences he has heard through his life, pointing out the place and the year they were said; the performance Under the Kitchen Table, recorded in private in 1975 as he lay naked under a table which was covered with a tablecloth, in which he tells a story of unrequited teenage love in Catholic Spain, that he wrote at 16. Finally, there is Mental Dirt Is Not as Easy to Clean Up as Bodily Dirt, recorded in 1974, in which the artist is seen taking a shower after reading a text, materialising the Catholic metaphor about cleanliness of body and mind.
Lola Hinojosa