17. THE MOTHMAN

Exhibition and performance of the Liverpool artist Tony Knox
In addition, performance of the Cologne artists Petra Deus and Tine Wille and concerts of the duo, O heart we are old '(Liverpool) and the singer-songwriter Rudolf Koenen (Cologne)

Photography ©  Ue Glaser
Photography ©  Ue Glaser

As a small man in a strange garb flits around, raises his arms and makes flattrige movements like a moth. That's weird, that's funny, that's disturbing, this is art. Tony Knox is the Mothman. In this elevator, he always runs through the streets of Liverpool to revive the ordinary everyday life with a spark of weirdness. In this elevator, he is even hopping around in distant India. And the people there kept him alternately as an idiot, or holy man. They have recognized a story of rebirth in it, and so they were not so wrong. In this elevator, Tony Knox has repeatedly put a wrestler in a ring to fight. Knox, the Mothman is, however, always be thrown out very quickly over the ropes. Indeed, one could keep Knox in his disguise for a wrestler. Wrestlers appear in the costumes, and they invent a fight figure.

The Mothman, the Mothman is the flighty of among the fighters. But what an artistic struggle has to look in a Catch-ring. Knox likes the wrestling, wrestling, for him it is a playful ritual for the battle of life. A bit is played while it's really the point. Deception and seriousness into each other, and you never know exactly when that element is in the game. Does that Knox is not sure how he has to understand life?


Knox recalls. As a child, he watched with curious fascination with the flight of a moth through his room. The flutter animal flying through the air, flew wriggling at the ceiling, danced like a Fencing musketeer, flew back into the air, turning pirouettes. Little Tony grabbed his hand after the moth.

He took it in his hand, then let it go again. Later, after a while not thought of it, he saw the moth suddenly lying motionless on his bed. The boy picked it up, he stroked it, put it on the windowsill. He thought that he could have possibly killed. He wanted to bring back to life. He wanted, that she might fly, but they did not move. He was sad and even more sad he was when his mother threw the dead moth in the toilet bowl and flushed it away. Tony's surprise was great when he saw the next day suddenly fluttering moth again through his room. She's back, he thought.

His eyes followed her flapping flight, and he was glad. Tony was sure that the moth was reborn. From that day on he loved moths more than any other animals. They appeared to him as something very special. A few months earlier his father had died.


Many years later, Tony Knox undertook with his girlfriend a trip to Australia. To his amazement, it was in Australia giant moths. Perhaps there were bats. For him there were giant moths. In the little house, where they stayed overnight and he had seen the night the moths, the next day, many of the animals were lying motionless on the ground. Knox was horrified. He immediately had the thought of having to revive it. Like the time as a child at the dead moth on his bed. He wore the large moths to the sink, washed each thoroughly and then he hung the large moths with their wings out to dry on a clothesline. He was sure that they would be flown off the next morning. In fact, they were, however, dead on the floor. There was no doubt that they were dead. His attempt at resuscitation was unsuccessful. Only later was it realized that the giant moths were possibly killed only by him and his washing action.

A childlike faith in rebirth through the plumbing had led him to this deception. Some time after that, back in Liverpool, Tony Knox had invented the Mothman. He had made a wing costume of brown cloth and a face mask. A little in appearance from Batman. And how this brought the moth man other than the familiar Tony Knox revealed. "I is another," wrote the poet Rimbaud. The Mothman is a transformation shape. And every performance, the Knox brings as Mothman for performance is an artistic course of action as a transformation happening. A bit like the ritual of a shaman. And a bit like the spectacle of a wrestler in the ring. Knox for the performance of the Mothman is a fantasy of repetition. His performance and in this context over the years he developed comic books and photographs visualize how childhood experiences can influence artistic concepts. The artistic process is for Knox for self-exploration and self-treatment. And between traumatic bewilderment and longing he presents the performance as an art form that targets the middle of the core existential experiences.

 

photography ©  Ue Glaser


Similarly, it goes into the performances of Tine Wille and Petra Deus always all or nothing. Besides the appearance of Knox as Mothman case the two performances at the Cologne artists Artclub. As with Knox in their productions of the body is brought as a focal point of our (life) experiences expressed. Between great excitement and utmost calm, poetry and drama, vibrating between desire and (self-) control. And the character (s) of an ineffable mystery. After Liverpool Cologne performance meeting in the house of the body perform concerts with the singer-songwriter Rudolf Koenen and the duo, Oh Heart, we are old 'in the ease elusive dreams.

Which follow the British and American tradition of songs Cologne musician Koenen combine delicate guitar playing with incisive rhythms, soft melodies with clever and sophisticated lyrics sound ideas, the dynamic and the romantic side of a developed from acoustic blues and folk music. Imports from Liverpool Simon Barr and Tom Cowcher offer with banjo and fiddle, vocal sounds and sound artefacts in their game on old instruments a developed from the tradition sound, which is brand new and leads to unknown worlds of sound.

artclub
Melchior Strasse 14, 50670 Cologne, Tel: 0221-6804737
22nd September 2012, 20 clock

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