Dear Steve McQueen,
I am writing you in the knowledge that it's possible you'll never read this
So I just speak freely instead of thinking it over too much.
I'm a young artist from Amsterdam, moving from a convenient middle
class gallery to a very established one with a solo in January.
When preparing for this show, my confusion about what I want from art
and what purpose I serve making it drove me mental.
I don't want to bore you with my frustration by elaborating
too much, but I do think it's quite valid to think about this for many artists.
In 2016,
a gallery collectors authenticity
oeuvre all paradox and contradiction.
Everyone works so fucking hard within a scene that is so subjective
in an era with very little money and belief and a lot of visual input,
oversaturated and underwhelmed, spoiled and insecure.
Everything is possible when things don't work out.
If it doesn't happen, you feel.
One day I was breaking my brains
about the best show to make in retrospect, a low point.
And I was standing in front of a friend's house when a dodgy car with three boys
drove by very slowly and very close to me.
It was then that I had a daydream.
One would come out and stab me.
The relief of force majeure beyond control was what I felt.
I could then just let everything go and it was not my fault.
This sounds a bit depressive, but a pretty solid idea
came from this dark and pathetic feeling Deadpan Busted.
A reenactment of a reenactment of you Steve McQueen doing the Buster Keaton,
the movie in which the facade of a barn falls on top of you
whilst you are standing there peacefully manly and fearless.
You are almost statue-ic
(not a word I know) heroic.
I want to make that film too.
But I won't stand in that open window.
I'm just one meter off. At the right time in the wrong place or the other way around.
But it won't.
But I won't die either.
I'll find my own way to survive.
May be through paper or polystyrene, but that's a logistic part, not a poetic one.
My question to you, because there always has to be one.
I'm sorry for that.
Probably the perils of being good at something and acknowledged for it.
But mine isn't too big or depends on you too much.
For this solo show, I want to make only collaborations
with all different from all different calibers of other artists.
I am collaborating with a forger.
Geert Jan Jansen and a friend Waynehorse
A lonely one half of a big duo Jake Chapman and a dead artist.
Bas Jan Ader
So far, all men large in presence and ethos all admired by me.
And even though this film didn't come from the idea
that I want to collaborate with you but the other way around, you are too close.
I know people that know your people, etc.
to not dare to ask.
Maybe you could join me in one way or another.
Or since I understand you are very busy and I'm perhaps too blunt.
I have 750 years to make this film, which is not the jackpot,
but perhaps you still have an image of the backside of the barn
of that pen that I could use.
I even turn a bit red behind the computer.
It's a very odd question,
but then I would only have to build the frame that drops, not the rest.
And it would save me a lot of time and money.
Or maybe you have another tip about how to do it best.
I know it is also quite something to ask,
especially about the still, but I hope you could consider.
Well, dear Steve McQueen,
I want to congratulate you with your deserved prize and fantastic work.
You are point blank. Very, very good.
And with this letter, I can anyway anyway justify.
I tried regardless of the outcome. With the kindest regards Aukje Dekker.
aukjedekker@gmail.com
0623...
Deadpan Busted (2017)
is a reenactment of the reenactment of Steve McQueen.
video piece Deadpan (1997) in which he duplicated
Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr (1928)
Buster Keaton Accelerate of physical comedy
and inventor of the stoic deadpan look, which means stare and do not blink.
Even though it's comical, is the phase of cinematic purity
who dispiritingly lost his independence to fame and gain.
Steve McQueen Peacefully manly, fierce and fearless
with that same deadpan but different intentions,
both standing there 70 years apart in front of their buildings.
The facade falls, but no blinks.
The deadpan prevails.
Steve McQueen implicitly comments on the invisibility
of black identity in the early cinema canon,
while Keaton quickly scampers away after comically delayed reaction,
McQueen remains in the record, stoic and unfazed by near disaster
and me.
I'm just reenacting in the realm of the artist that I was that day today.
In reverently self-mocking context gave him a bit of Buster
back to Steve imitating but just being one meter off.
And I got the whole house on my head.