Tris Vonna-Michell

Entangled (hi)stories transform a museum into a sitcom. Storytellers and voices amongst others: Yoko Ono, Tris Vonna-Michell & Bruce LaBruce as well as Maurizio Cattelan's horse coming to life and triggering further events.

“All you need to know is that he loves quail eggs.” This is what Vonna-Michell’s father told him about French sound poet Henri Chopin, who subsequently has been the subject of a decade-long research project. Vonna-Michell’s rapid-fire monologue ties together the debris of this research in an opaque cabinet of wonders.

Smoke & Mirrors proceeds by verbal and visual free association, as Vonna-Michell, sitting in the ‘fabricated grotto’ of a sauna, recollects both his difficult acquisition of a defunct audiovisual company’s inventory, and the many cultural and personal memories this archive triggers within him.

Japan, Tokyo 2008, a journey. Tris Vonna-Michell returns after seven years. Back to a city in which he lived on the streets for five weeks. Registers deals with a story from the artist’s life. A story about his time in Japan, presented as a monologue, visually as a slide show, musically accompanied by a montage of compositions by Jan Matthé, Field Recordings, and guided by the voice of the artist.