Totem and Taboo
A Performance by Lorenzo Vitturi and Tom Lovelace
@ Unseen, Amsterdam
26-29 September 2013
At Unseen 2013, Self Publish, Be Happy presented a conceptual re-imagining of Sigmund Freud’s 1913 collection of essays, Totem and Taboo. The essays work to assign ideas of psychoanalysis to the fields of anthropology, archaeology and religion. These performance pieces by two contemporary artists, Lorenzo Vitturi and Tom Lovelace lay somewhere between the realms of theatre and magic, and worked simultaneously towards a uniquely playful interpretation of the texts.
In the site-specific installation Totem, Lorenzo Vitturi worked in an intuitive manner, collecting materials that he found at the fair and recycled in order to create a makeshift sculpture. This sculpture then turned into a temporary studio in which Vitturi photographed visitors to the fair. These photographs were consequently hung on the sculpture and contributed to the experimental, immersive and ever morphing sphere of experience – a totem erected to mark the fair.
Tom Lovelace’s Taboo performances presented a series of site-specific photographic installations and live responses to the seemingly forbidden and illicit. Lovelace staged daily performances and sculptural responses to the architecture of Unseen. Using both public and private spaces, he produced fleeting actions that manifested as both live performance and photographic print.
The performances lasted for the duration of the fair after which point they exist only in their documentation, in a special publication that will become available at the Unseen Book Fair. SPBH Totem & Taboo was, therefore, a fleeting visual feast, an homage to photography and an ephemeral exploration of the way in which we experience it.