TRIS VONNA-MICHELL 08.01.06-09.09.06 MILLIKEN, STOCKHOLM
Rather than send out a written press release, gallery representatives personally telephone invitees, inaugurating a dialogue that constitutes the show’s artistic premise. Arriving at the gallery, visitors find the young British artist and storyteller Tris Vonna-Michell sitting opposite two chairs at a table, around which he has placed physical “props” to accompany his story. The artist asks how many minutes the visitor would like to listen, then sets an egg clock to determine when time is up. (My own experience suggests that eight minutes is a bit too short to accommodate the extremely dense tale.) The show’s title, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” is a nod to the moment in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland when Alice exchanges reality for fantasy—a moment with many parallels to Vonna-Michell’s narrative, a tale of coincidences, the hunt for answers, and Stasi archives told in several acts that consistently blurs the line between fiction and reality. The quiet strength of Vonna-Michell’s voice in a dark room brings together disparate props, including a slide show, a video, news articles, objects (such as a paper shredder and a book on Humpty Dumpty), and photographs. Despite obvious comparisons to Fluxus and the more recent performance art of Tino Sehgal and John Bock, Vonna-Michell’s practice is in a class of its own.