Dora Garcia

What a fucking wonderful audience

Dora Garcia’s work is a result of institutional critique and more generally that of language, following the conceptual artists of the 1960s like Weiner and Kosuth and Fraser from the 1980s and 1990s.What a fucking wonderful audience is positioned conveniently at the crossroads of several trends identified in the work of the artist. The performance from which it is derived, was made at the Biennale of Sydney in 2008, taking the form of a guided tour at the Museum of Modern Art in Sydney and focuses on artworks that were not physically present. A performer acts as a traditional museum guide and offers visitors a guided tour that comments on several controversial works from art and film history like “Cosmococa” by Oiticica, “Kunst Kick “by Chris Burden, “The Society of Spectacle” by Guy Debord. In the script of the tour guide, Garcia makes connections between these works and various authors whose approach was to question the position of the viewer and the artist within the institution. Included in the work are annotated framed index cards originating from the performance in Sydney. The printed text includes text written entirely by Dora Garcia, while the annotations stem from the performer, who clarifies or contradicts the discourse of the artist and uses it for his tour. The framed photograph documents the performance. Garcia never carries out personal performances, rather, she commissions professional actors. Being in relative distance to the viewer, she establishes a distinct relationship between performer and audience. This performance matches up to projects like The Beggar’s Opera, presented at the Skulptur Projekte de Münster for which the artist spoiled the expectations of the visitors. For those who continued to search for a sculpture by Dora Garcia, they found instead an actor playing the role of a beggar whose adventures were recorded on a blog.