Maria Anna Obermeier – Crying Institute

Andre Fraser – Official Welcome, 2001, Crying Part of Performance: 01:03:47-01:07:34

The original text of Official Welcome includes quotations, unattributed in the actual performance, from a number of contemporary artists and critics including Benjamin Buchloh, Gabriel Orozco, Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Kara Walker, as well as comments made by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Each time Official Welcome is performed, Fraser adapts small elements of her script so that the speech includes specific references to the institution involved in the event.

For the version performed in Hamburg, Fraser incorporated comments on her work written by Yilmaz Dziewior, the curator of the show at the Kunstverein 2003.

Both the content of the speech and the manner in which Fraser performs in the video satirise the conventions of formal art events.

The work places particular emphasis on the exaggerated praise often given to an artist’s work by critics and curators, and the arrogance or false modesty that may be offered by artists in return.

In 2012 Fraser suggested that Official Welcome is about: “the profound ambivalence that’s haunted so much twentieth-century art and particularly avant-garde traditions – the kind of love-hate relationship that artists have with art, its institutions, and the people who support them.”

Playing a role:

exploring the different roles played by individuals within the art world, as well as the purposes and policies of art institutions -> institutional critique.
Fraser does not explicitly inform the audience of the specific role she is inhabiting at any one time, the changes between different personae are signalled by distinct shifts in her tone, language and posture, often to comic effect.
For instance, while she is fluid and grandiose during some sections, at other times she stutters as if struggling to articulate her thoughts.

Nakedness:

Official Welcome can also be viewed within the history of performance art, especially in its claim that the performer is ‘an object in an artwork’. In stripping down to her Gucci underwear and high-heeled shoes, Fraser draws a parallel with Show 1998, a work by the Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft in which fifteen female models (ten wearing Gucci underwear and high-heels and five in only their shoes) were positioned in the atrium of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
In Official Welcome the provocations Fraser issues while standing in her underwear – including ‘kiss my ass’ and ‘kiss my tits’ – draw attention to how the female body has been depicted in art throughout history
“I’m not a person today. I’m an object in an artwork. It’s about emptiness.“
and raise questions about the status of women within the art world more generally.

dictionary of crying

onomatopoeic crying	Let out until there is no more air.	Hnnnnnn
	Breathe in short and often in succession. The inhaling is very dominant compared to the exhalation is very dominant.	h…hn…hh…h…hn…hhh..
	Want to get air but can’t manage a whole breaths, only small faltering mini breaths because you are so tense.	h-h-h-h.. chLLL!!
	A loop with sometimes longer and shorter pauses and in between a little burp, hiccup and longer hiccup. As if the body itself doesn’t know how to do it.	hnnnn, Hnnnnn h-h-h-hig
	When hyperwentilating	Hnhnhnhnhn
	When snot comes out	Roisch
	When many tears come out	Knknkn
	When it gets better in the end	Hn hn
	When you try to keep your mouth closed while crying	Mmmmfffmmm
	Sobbing silently	Huuu..Huu..huuhu…
	Inhale and exhale loudly, let everything out	a..aah…
	Screaming and sobbing	wah.. whuuuuuuh.. uuuuhh… aah…aahaaa…
	Becomes calmer and normal breathing again	mmmmhh.. mmh… mmh…
	really crying	Hfn,hf,hf…mfhnn…huh,hf,hf…
crying in motherlanguage	Loin de mon être bruyant, mes larmes, elles, sont silencieuses, embarrassées, timides. Seuls des reniflements ponctuels peuvent les sortir de l’ombre ; elles ont toujours été comme ça : de nature discrète.	Far from my noisy being, my tears are silent, embarrassed, shy. Only occasional sniffles can bring them out of the shadows. from the shadows; they have always been like that: of a discreet nature.
	Zähes Herzklopfen; harter Knoten im Hals, der langsam immer höher rutscht bis er kurz vor dem Gaumen stecken bleibt; Augenbrauen ziehen sich zusammen und bilden Falten auf der Stirn; Schweres Schlucken; Leichtes Beben; Wasser steigt in den Augen an bis die erste Träne über den Rand des Augenlieds rinnt, über die Wange und schließlich von meinem Kiefer tropft; härteres Beben das vom Bauch sich durch den Oberkörper bis zur Stirn ausbreitet; Tränen rinnen, fließen, werden kleine Sturzbäche auf einer Landschaft aus Haut und feinen Härchen; der Kloß schnürt stärker und stärker den Hals zu; das Gesicht läuft rot an, am rötesten die Augen; der Körper verspannt sich, verkrampft sich; tropf, tropf, tropf	Tough heart pounding; hard lump in the throat, which slowly slides higher and higher until it gets stuck just before the palate; Eyebrows draw together and form wrinkles on forehead; Hard swallowing; Slight tremor; Water rises in the eyes until the first tear trickles over the edge of the eyelid runs down my cheek and finally drips from my jaw; Harder tremor that spreads from my stomach through my upper body to my forehead; Tears trickle, flow, become little torrents on a landscape of skin and fine hairs; the lump tightens the throat more and more; the face turns red, the eyes the reddest; the body tenses up, cramps; drip, drip, drip
		It was happening in the depth of a crack in the ground and the sound of my weeping would impact the walls of this crevice. but as the sound was so loud, it was not noticeable that there was echo. My body feels alone in the vast crack in the ground and it is usually cold, like an uncomfortable icy stream of wind, that sometimes is encountered with expelling warmth of my body.
visial crying in language	in capital and small letters
not crying	when crying is not the speciality	https://youtu.be/71ETJuU2jUI