Artist Gernot Wieland will perform an adapted version of his 2019 lecture-performance, Past, Present, Present, Past. Following his performance, Wieland will be joined on stage by Nuar Alsadir, a poet and practicing psychoanalyst. Some audience participation may occur. Gernot Wieland’s diagrams illustrate some of the basic concepts of his lecture-performance Past, Present, Present, Past. Wieland examines the Austrian predilection for culinary delights and easy living as an expression of repressed feelings of guilt, hate, and powerlessness. One of his heroes is the prophet Jonah. In Wieland’s lecture, Jonah appears as a Monty Pythonesque figure, ridiculous through and through. In many ways, he resembles a child oppressed by his mother and father who might become a serial killer out of frustration, as the first diagram shows. The second diagram elaborates this basic structure into a broader field of repression—sequences which generate the desires and symbolisms that define reality.
New York City, NY; NYC