Hunger Artist
11/2018 All Night Long, Lythrodontas, CY
After one day without eating, I climbed a big tree under the dark Cypriot sky. With the help of a small torch, I was repeatedly reading a famous short story of Franz Kafka A Hunger Artist (1922) for three hours. My tired, whispering voice was amplified through a loudspeaker.
Kafka’s story seems to me as a neglected but essential inspirational source for the long durational (performance) art genre. The phenomena of hunger artists captured by Kafka is missing in performance history books yet it predated the codified and popular long durational performances of the 1960s by several decades, even centuries.
The presentation in Cyprus was my second actualization of the story, after the Artist In Feasting (2015, Prague, Festival Performance). Though in Prague I did not starve but instead treated myself with a meal consisting of several courses.
Curated by: Petros Konnaris, Anthi Pafiou
