|
A Smile Without a Cat
(Celebration of Annlee's Vanishing)
Pierre Huyghe & Philippe Parreno
TRANS>
invited Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno to present A Smile without a Cat
(Celebration of Annlee's Vanishing) for the inaugural night of Art Basel Miami Beach on December 4, 2002. This was her last
performance/manifestation. As her silhouette sparkled and dissipated in a
series of fireworks over the skies of Miami Beach, she was finally
decommissioned and removed from the kingdom of representation.
A Smile without a Cat (Celebration of Annlee's Vanishing) has received many
reviews, articles and mentions from the press, including the cover and
centerfold of Artforum's January 2003 issue. This is the first time Artforum
has devoted their cover to another magazine's project.
|
Several years ago, the internationally renowned artists Pierre Huyghe and
Philippe Parreno purchased the copyright of an unused Japanese anime
character named Annlee from a design agency that produces and sells computer
files for fictitious cartoon characters. They began bringing her to life in
a series of computer animations and other artworks that are collectively
known as No Ghost Just A Shell. In addition, Huyghe and Parreno have also
invited other artists to "adopt" what is essentially an orphaned image and
create stories and scenarios with the aim of further multiplying the range
and reach of her character. Prior to being bought, Annlee was an
image/identity without a future, designed to join any kind of story, but
with no chance of permanently inhabiting any of them. With the Annlee
project, notions of authorship, copyright, and representation are blurred in
the interrelations and disconnections created between all the individual
artists who took her on. Through these collaborative artworks and projects,
the image of Annlee has "entered" numerous museums such as the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Kunsthalle in Zürich, and the Institute of Visual Culture in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, as well as international exhibitions such as the Venice
Biennale.
| |
