Taufiq Zainal

As seen in the UWA Science Library ground floor men’s toilet:

Here I sit all broken hearted
Came to shit but only farted :(

I feel your pain.

Brief Candle is an endurance performance work by Perth artist and current UWA Art History honours student Alex Wolman.

“It involves him entering a space in a taped-up strait-jacket and then attempting to rip his way out of it, while at the same time screaming as violently as possible. Once he has freed himself from the jacket, the screaming does not stop, as it initially should seem to, but continues for another agonising forty minutes; his voice becoming hoarser and fainter. During this time he coughs up blood and phlegm, and at moments, wretches brutally. He eventually collapses to the floor, effecting a complete capitulation and degeneration of his body. Taking its title from a famous passage in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Brief Candle is a reflection on the potentials and limitations of simply being alive.”

You can view the entire fifty-one minute performance art on video on the artist’s Vimeo page (I advise viewer discretion, it can be quite confronting for some people). It is also currently on display at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art’s Hatched: National Graduate Show 2013 exhibition until the 9th of June.

As seen in the UWA Science Library ground floor men’s toilet:

Some people come here to sit and think;
Some people come here to shit and stink.
But I come here to scratch my balls,
and read the bullshit on the walls.