You already know very well that on the weekends we like to entertain you with stimulating content, so to provide you with a sweet getaway from everyday problems, something that allows you to immerse yourself in the art world and that is easily enjoyable from home. To overstep the current impossibility of moving, there has been a relevant increase in the number of cultural projects and artistic formats using websites and social channels as a way to make art accessible. Among these, today we want to introduce you to the latest project by Maurizio Cattelan "Bedtime Stories", created for the New Museum in New York.
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Under the artistic direction of Massimiliano Gioni, Cattelan asked to several artists (friends or not) to tell a story for the New Museum virtual public and to record themselves while reading it, without using any kind of filter. Initially, there were artists who chose to act their favorite abstracts from poems and novels, but, after a few records, creativity found its way, and some other participants decided to read personal writing or to improvise an artistic performance. Thus, Cattelan offered an original way of being together during the days of isolation, while listening to anecdotes and stories by artists and creatives from all over the world.
When interviewed by The New York Times, Cattelan declared: "It would have been quite depressing if all the invited artists and contributors had chosen fairy tales and children stories [...] We look to artists for their ability to show us the unexpected, so I am thankful to all the participants for coming up with some genuinely weird stuff".
Among the artists that participated in "Bedtime Stories" project, we find Rashid Johnson performing Preface based on the Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka; David Byrne reading Milton Rokeach's The Three Christs of Ypsilanti and Simone Weil’s “Gravity and Grace”; Thomas Hirschhorn reading The Shadow and Grace. Nicole Eisenman and Sarah Nicole Prickett chose an excerpt from Laurie Weeks's Debbie's Barium Swallow story, while Iggy Pop red a love letter, that was both dramatic and humorous, to her long-lost dog.
Finalized at the end of June 2020, the project is still available both on the New Museum's website and on its Instagram page, perhaps it can still be enriched with new stories. In addition to the artists already mentioned, you should not miss the stories by Black Thought, John Bock, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Minerva Cuevas, Tacita Dean, Cheryl Donegan, Jimmie Durham, Rachel Feinstein, Mary Heilmann, Camille Henrot, Joan Jonas, Jeff Koons, Gabriel Kuri, Maya Lin, Ibrahim Mahama, Marilyn Minter, Takashi Murakami, Nicolas Party, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Seth Price, Laure Prouvost, Ugo Rondinone, Cally Spooner, Michael Stipe, Suha Traboulsi, Wu Tsang, Andra Ursuta, Adrián Villar Rojas, Jordan Wolfson.
Cover image: Bedtime Stories, Maurizio Cattelan, New Museum, New York.