Part 3 of our series of “Conversations with a Cultural Icon”
With the band RED LARGO and a cast of five actors, Pop! Andy Warhol & The Velvet Underground, attempts to provide a performative answer to the question of how Pop became Culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Following Jaws and Bowie in Berlin, we play and dance and sing the pain away!
Five curators are planning an art exhibition: Andy Warhol’s Underground Years 1965 – 68. Tricky. What do they want to exhibit, what can they agree on? A Factory reenactment? Cover versions of Velvet Underground songs played live in the museum? Underground films in video format? One thing is sure – just like the Velvets, there will be much more discord than harmony.
Sixty years ago, pop artist Andy Warhol suddenly shapeshifted into a filmmaker. Flanked by his so-called “Superstars”, he shot flicks like Blow Job, Chelsea Girls and Lonesome Cowboys; crude, daring, offbeat black-and-white movies walking the fine line between pornography and arthouse film. Along with these “underground films”, he presented the ultra-wild and ultra-loud performance series Exploding Plastic Inevitable as well as produced the debut album of the rock band The Velvet Underground with the German singer Nico – the album cover featured the most iconic image of those few “underground years”, the yellow banana.
The art world responded with a collective shrug, but was more than happy to serve as a permanent guest at Warhol’s hustling, bustling factory where the art was made in the front, the shagging was taking place in the back and amphetamines were taken everywhere.
Hardly anyone wanted to see the films, the performance series earned scathing reviews and no one bought the album.
Six decades later, however, they have become cherished cultural icons like the works of Picasso, Wagner or Fellini, while the Factory is now deemed a central historical site for queer emancipation. How did that happen?
At present, Visniec has had many of his works staged in France, and some of his plays written in French are published. His plays have been staged in more than 20 countries. In Romania, after the fall of Communism, Matéi Visniec has become one of the most frequently performed authors.
Everywhere they look things are not equal; in the taxi at the end of the night, on the bench in the middle of a village, in the congregation, in the boardroom, in the home. They tell stories of abortion, sing about violence and dance about menopause. They remember the lies they were told as children and question the hope that things might be different for future generations.