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Applause

Their first joint creation, Applause (1977, Expo-arte, Bari)

refers to the ambiguous relationship between the artist

and his public – a relationship of attraction and distance. It is an acutely

ironic piece in which the artist's action ends with the noisy applause

from a mechanism of wooden hands operated by the artist himself.

The action's emphasis on creativity culminates in this imperative

expression of approval which asserts the artist's existence.

The duo believes that the artist is thus violently jolted out

of his narcissistic absorption with his own figure. Yet they see the forces

acting antagonistically to our need to lose ourselves in something

that is not recognized as part of everyday reality.

“Applause” speaks sarcastically of the end of the Dream, the end

of the action. Today, even our escape into the world of art has a limit.

It is called upon to meet social needs. The audience does exist,

but it is made of foreign wills. It is ready to applaud in exchange

for a dialectic means which will be accessible to it.

The mystery that is generated in an artistic statement, when the viewer

is mentally transported to another time and place, must be interrupted

by applauding the falsity of the representation. For if it were to be

applauded as true, as a ritual for reclaiming certain values, the danger

would be too great...

Efi Strousa
Athens, June 1980