 It's Friday, May 29th, 2015, a sunny afternoon at the University of Chicago, and I'm standing in a gallery cradling in my hand a fragment of a broken sculpture by the artist Jeff Koons. Red balloon dog, a tabletop ceramic version of one of those poodles into the shape of which a circus clown might twist a long balloon like clumsy, squeaky magic then handed to a child. The notorious Koons would consider such low-culture iconography ideal material for fabrication as a pristine replica bearing his name and a high-priced tag, but this object is worthless, more precisely valueless. We now enclose herewith proof of loss. So reads the insurance statement. Because the art patrons who owned this work collected its insured value after it apparently dropped shattered. I say valueless because this artwork having been insured and collected on has become property of the insurance company and removed forever from the possibility of private ownership. Valueless, unownable, consigned to a catalog in a warehoused limbo until the project of the Salvage Art Institute found a legal way to place it on public display once again in this case for the inaugural exhibition of the University of Chicago's Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. The broken pieces have now been gathered and displayed as part of the exhibit No Longer Art. Works from the Salvage Art Institute collection. There's a large print by Robert Rauschenberg, scratched. Two Jim Dine etchings, water damaged. An oil on canvas with a hole in it. Sculptures of fractured stone and splintered wood, all on carts that we can wheel around, all that we can handle as much as we like. Thus I hold a piece of the broken red balloon dog in my hand and in this act and this act awakens in me some unsettling tenderness. There's a class conversation here, certainly, a peek behind the curtain into collector estates that this detritus provides, but that does not absorb me as much as the evidence of once smug and cavalier coonsie and whimsy and how the sheer redness of this dog, the super real Ruby Slippers race car sheen could not shelter it from the simplest destruction. I hold in my hand a treasure unreparable by all the king's horses and all the king's men. No other coons work has evoked anything in me like this, like this revelation that in its life for what are this color and these forms if not memento vivari signs of life. This ceramic dog, the spirit of fragility lived so near the faded precipice that now, like a haggard orpheus fresh from the underworld, it radiates peasant beauty, the dignity of rust, the humble wobbly of which the haiku poet spoke, imperfect and impermanent, its moment past, its brilliance fresh, and it's imperfect and impermanent, its moment past, its brilliance fragmentary. These could be pieces of my broken self that I arranged to bring the shape of some remembered poodle wholeness back into view. Thinking in these thoughts, what insignificant interval separates from death? Thinking in remembering, in living, when a gentle voice behind me asks, Matthew, are you okay? I'm with Lynn Hickson and she says, you've been staring at that broken dog for some time. For many years I taught a course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago titled The Ethics and Aesthetics of Failure. In early 2001 Tim Etchels, an artist, writer and the director of the UK-based Forced Entertainment and an old friend visited Chicago. We met immediately after my morning session and I told him about the class. We talked about our mutual interest in the subject. Before long, Tim had proposed the Institute of Failure, a collaboration designed for the two of us. He quickly obtained funding for the ongoing project and for the next 10 or so years we presented live performance lectures under the auspices of the Institute. Some events we composed together, some existed only online, some were presented remotely in our absence and some were solo ventures. Despite their infrequency, the events maintained a consistent theatrical sincerity in their various highly composed forms of pseudo-academic philosophical failure analysis. It seems to me now that the Institute of Failure, in response to its various invitations, spoke directly to the people in the room and never aspired to more than that. Now it's June, just a few weeks after our visit to the Salvage Art Institute and Lynn and I are in Sheffield UK lecturing at the university and visiting our forced entertainment friends. We arrive at a rehearsal for a tabletop Shakespeare in time to see Richard Loudon conclude Richard II. After which he enthusiastically shows me the objects he has cast for Macbeth. In particular the rusty spikes and nails that will play Macbeth's murderous henchmen. Look at these actors he says. All from my shop. Tim tells me they will return to Chicago in 2016 for a series of performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art and you know what that means. Time to resurrect the Institute of Failure for a new event. On the train to London and in the weeks that follow my mind keeps returning to my moment with the broken red balloon dog. What would I say about it or what would I write and why and how? An obscure literary term comes to mind. Adoxography, the lost art of praising worthless things or of writing with the formality disproportionate to the insignificance of the object. The term first described in Praise of Folly the essay written in Latin in 1509 by Erasmus in Rotterdam. It's a subtle form of failure but a failure nonetheless when the words mismatch the object that they praise. We invite a line of five Chicago guest writers and propose this as a constraining directive. Devote your attention and intelligence to any object of your choice unworthy of them both. We present the event in Chicago the five monologues composed by guest writers read by the five forced entertainment performers. In the lobby I'm surprised to encounter Tom Seller. He's here to see the whole series of performances and to write an article on forced entertainment for Art Forum. Some weeks later Tom invites me to present an Institute of Failure event for the Prelude Festival in New York on October 5th. He says this part of the festival will engage the theme of failure. It will be one month before the presidential election. I'm not good at engaging politics directly but I accept the offer and after consulting with Tim we decide on two events. I will give a lecture on the history of the Institute and then we will present Broken Red Balloon Dog New York Edition. Tim will be unable to attend although he will be in New York the following week for the Crossing the Line Festival. He'll contribute writing to both. For this event in the absence of forced entertainment we settle on a simplified version of writers presenting their own texts. Of the original Chicago lineup we are able to include Blair Bogan, artist, performer and video maker and Robin Deacon, performer, artist and filmmaker. Recently transplanted from London. To them we add resident New York contributors. Abigail Browdy, writer and director from 600 Highwaymen. Abby unable to attend has selected Itamar Segev as her surrogate reader. Composer, musician, singer, songwriter and writer David Grubbs. And writer, performer and director Sebastien called around Benteen. The lineup looks like this. I will give an introduction, then Sebastien, then Itamar performing Abby's text, then David, then Robin, then Blair and then I will present Tim's conclusion. There was neither voice nor crested image nor chorister nor priest. There was only the broken red balloon dog. So I have come to understand and to report. Now we are ready and now we will begin. The moment our appendix becomes relevant is the moment it must be removed. It is the moment of a relevant negation. About 3.5 inches in length and 0.3 inches in diameter. This tiny tube located at the junction of the small and large intestines leads nowhere. It just hangs there. Serving no primary vital functions, the appendix is a vestigial structure. An organ or trait that has lost all or most of its original function through evolution. Vestigial from the Latin vestigium, meaning footprint, trace or mark. In its ancestral form the appendix's function was digestive. Its microbes help break down cellulose and similar indigestible plant material when our primate ancestors lived on a diet rich in foliage. In humans the appendix is located at McBernie's point named after surgeon Charles McBernie, who in 1889 while trying to locate the exact source of appendicitis wrote, quote, the seat of greatest pain determined by the pressure of one finger has been very exactly between 1.5 inches and 2 inches from the interior spinous process of the ilium on a straight line drawn from that process to the umbilicus. This may appear to be an affectation of accuracy, but so far as my experience goes the observation is correct. The appendix is not alone as a vestigial structure in our bodies. Our coxis is the remnants of a lost tail. When growing as embryos between days 33 and 53 after fertilization we have a tail for a period of four weeks. As we develop into a fetus the tail is then absorbed by the growing body. No longer assisting in balance and mobility our tailbone just retains a secondary function as an attachment of point for tendons, ligaments and muscles. The vomeronasal organ in our noses was part of an olfactory system used to detect pheromones in a more sophisticated manner. Some animals such as zebras, goats and horses still use this organ by deploying the phlemon response which facilitates the transfer of pheromones and other scents into the vomeronasal organ located above the roof of the mouth via a duct which exits just behind the front teeth of the animal. As part of the phlemon response an animal curls back its upper lip exposing its front teeth, inhales with the nostrils usually closed and then often holds this position for several seconds. Our wisdom teeth are the remains of third molars that our ancestors use to help in grinding down plant tissue. But when the body size of mammals reduces rapidly our jaws become too small to house all of our teeth. Over crowding eventually results in selection for fewer and smaller teeth. This problem has been exacerbated in the past four centuries as our diet has become softer and more processed. With less wear and tear on molars jaw space is at an even higher premium. So the third molars the last teeth to erupt run out of space. The occipitalis minor muscle in the head, the vibrusal capsular muscles in the upper lips, the pulmaris longus muscle in our arms, the levator clavicular muscle in the neck, the pyramidalis muscle in the torso, the latissimus doris muscle in the back, the plantaris muscle on the leg, the chondrolongorus muscle in the tongue. All non-functional. Our ears still retain small muscles that can no longer move them with the antenna like flexibility of other mammals. And the small pink membrane in the inside corner of our eyes. There the pleica semilunaris forms the vestigial remains of a transparent third eyelid which could be drawn across the eye for protection and to moisten it while maintaining vision. Goosebumps were originally designed to raise the hair in our skins and make us seem larger in front of predators. Raising the hair also trapped an extra layer of air keeping us warm. But with the diminished amount of hair in humans the reflex formation of goose bumps when we feel stressed or cold is also vestigial. The hiccup is an evolutionary remnant of earlier amphibian respiration. Anphibians such as tadpoles gulp air and water across their gills via a rather simple motor reflex akin to hiccuping in mammals. The motor pathways that enable hiccuping form early during fetal development before their motor pathways that enable normal lung ventilation. Thus the hiccup is evolutionarily antecedent to modern lung respiration. We carry these vestiges inside us. These now useless traits in organs. A cemetery of tissues and reflexes. Not quite gone. Not really useful. Small catastrophes on their way out. What does it mean to live through the end of things with our bodies? What does it mean that we carry an inerrant uselessness wherever we go? Perhaps their function is no longer biological but ontological. For they point to our condition as beings in process. As a species in the making. As the indeterminate locus of a past not yet resolved and a future not yet fully formed. It means we also carry with us the beginning of things. The continued activity of the enzyme lactase in adulthood has recently evolved as an adaptation to the consumption of non-human milk and dairy products beyond infancy. In some populations selection is tending to lengthen the reproductive period of humans and menopause is evolving to occur later in life. Will we now evolve according to conditions we have created for ourselves? What new organs and traits await us as we move into the Anthropocene? Whatever the answer let us take a moment now to thank those that got us here and are now slowly leaving us. The vestiges we carry. Carnal emblems of our impermanence. My friend Abby isn't here. Which isn't a problem. It's just the way it is. She is somewhere in some other city. She didn't say where all she asked is that I come and speak on her behalf. Since she could not be here. And since she is not here and these words are now mine. These words she asked me to say. I'm going to say them in the way that I would like. Because she is not here to tell me how to say them. She is not here to ask me to say them in a particular way. She will not even know. If I followed her instructions. If I have read the words on her page or read something else. She will not know if I executed the punctuations the way she wanted them. She will not know. But then neither will you. You'll have to trust me and so will she. Anyway, Abby is somewhere far away. She's standing on the street. It is warm where she is. It's warmer than here. She's wearing summer clothes. She does not have a jacket. So Abby, she does not speak the language of where she is. So Abby stands by herself. Not talking to anyone. Listening to others make conversations. But she is silent. She is walking. She is following other people walking in a certain direction. She is following them because they are certain of where they are going. And they are walking up a hill. The climb is steep. And she walks up that hill. There are loose rocks and there's a gate. And at the gate stands a guard. Who's wearing a blue uniform. And one by one people are handing to the guard money. And he is giving them a ticket. And Abby does the same. And she gives him some coins. And he gives her a ticket. A green slip. And she walks in through the gate. And she walks in through the gate with others. With other people. There are ruins of an ancient temple. Three columns stand straight up. Two lie on the ground as if they were napping and at some moment might wake up. They will get up. Get up again. Get up together with their old friends. And go back to work. Go back to the job of holding things up. Abby's waiting. But they don't do that. You can wander in and around these ruins. Walk up right next to them. You can touch them. You can scratch them with your fingernails. In between the pieces of the ruins she sees there is a little boy playing with some pebbles in the dirt. What are those pebbles? Are those pebbles pieces of the ancient ruins? Are they pieces that broke off? Or are they just pebbles? Are they just ordinary rocks? He arranges the pieces of stone in a line. And then another line. And then another. And then he messes up all the lines. And he starts again. He grabs a handful and let them all fall off of his palm slowly. He sorts them and puts them in an order. He doesn't look up from his serious play. And Abby is looking at this small child. Who doesn't look back up? Who only looks at the small rocks before him. And he does not care that his parents have paid for this ticket. And he does not care that these ruins are older than anything that he has ever known. He does not care to hear about ancient civilizations. He is not frightened when they talk about the fall of Rome because he cannot imagine civilization falling the way that we can. The way you can when you are an adult and you realize that we are closer to ruins than we think. The way that you can when every day that passes and civilization does not fall, it seems like a little miracle. And the boy's parents call him, they call his name. And he grabs a handful of small rocks and he runs towards his parents who are leaving the site. He scatters them behind as he runs pieces of ancient history moving farther and farther away from the temple than they once were. And Abby is still watching. Still standing there. And she follows the boy. And she picks up one of his scattered pebbles. She thinks about putting it in her pocket. She thinks about putting it back near the ancient fallen columns. She holds it and turns it over. And then she puts it back on the ground. She too leaves the site. Later Abby wrote all this down. She wrote it down and asked me to say it to tell this story. She is thinking about us. Every one of us. She thinks she knows a few of us here. She can't be sure. She can't see us. But she's wondering what this room is like. She's wondering who is listening to me. To me being her. She's wondering if I feel alright standing up here saying what you wanted me to say. Wondering what will become of this. I think it would be nice if we maybe took a photo to show her. Sorry my phone's off. We'll take a sec. Oh yeah this is good. You guys look great. Thank you. You really know how to handle a crowd. It's clear as can be that you've been doing this for a long time. Everyone was in the palm of your hand. All of us in the audience, we can only imagine what that must feel like. If someone said it's hard to be humble when you're strutting on the jumbotron. After an evening like this how do you fall asleep? You must be psyched 24-7. In my opinion you have the single best job in the world. When you lit a cigarette on stage everyone in the audience reached for their lighter even though there's no smoking allowed. But that only applied to us and smoking never looked so good. When you knocked back a scotch on stage the lines at the bar suddenly became impossibly long. It would have taken 20 minutes to get a bartender's attention. You really know how to choose an opening act. There was no competition. And one of the most intense parts right off the bat no one could believe it was when you asked us if we thought that you were ugly. It came out of nowhere and instantly you seemed like you were made of glass and might shatter. Where would you get that crazy idea? Everyone was freaking out screaming trying to reassure you that you're beautiful. People near me were crying. You know how to get a response. I would say that the video projections add a whole other dimension. Ditto for those moments when the entire band would stop on a dime and everyone in the house would scream like being on a rollercoaster right before the plunge. That stuff never gets old. The opening monologue was really funny. You can't have too many skits. It takes an experienced performer to deal with technical difficulties. You never let them see you sweat until it's time to truly go ape shit. It looked like hard work but you also looked like you were having the time of your life. The video close-ups were just the right amount of gross. And when there were technical issues you kept your cool until it was too much. Everyone has limits and it's got to be stressful up there. At the end of the day somebody has to be in charge. It was pretty much the largest screen I've ever seen. I'm not even sure that it could be called a screen. And you were right when you let the sound person have it. I don't know how you can be expected to perform if you can't hear yourself on stage. And if she can't do her job she should be looking for another line of work. Plenty of talented people. I thought you handled it professionally. The burlesque part was kinky. They put a twist on things. Are they really triplets and is that really their last name? Can you imagine growing up without being your name? Is it even possible? I saw the show the night before in Boston. Really I was there two nights in a row. That's a fan's dedication. At first I was surprised that you said a lot of the same things word for word. And then I realized it was more like a play with a script. It's like a play scripted with music. When you're on stage the video is like a giant painting with eyes that follow you everywhere even after the show. It's like a play or an art installation but with animals. And I don't think anyone could tell whether the animals were real or not. It's like a play plus a video album brought to life with animals and hilarious walk on parts inside the video game of your dreams. It's like a high tech court TV. It's like the Nuremberg rally. As an interactive contemporary courtroom drama with you as judge, jury and executioner. It's super patriotic. I like the acoustic portion. Pretty much everyone liked the acoustic portion. It allowed people to feel different things. The people who didn't like the acoustic portion shouldn't have been there anyway. I don't know why people bother to come to something like this if they're just going to make trouble. You could take one look at them even before it started and see that they didn't belong there. I thought that the security crew was effective. Sometimes the protests were a little loud during the acoustic portion. It's always good to throw stand-up comedy into the mix. If people weren't laughing out loud, it doesn't mean they weren't enjoying it and it doesn't mean that they weren't agreeing with you. Even during the acoustic segment, when you do the stop on a dime thing, it's like a game of musical chairs where everyone wins. I would say that pretty much everyone there at the very end agreed with you 100%. And again, the security crew was amazing. The long video toward the end made me feel proud of my country. I think everyone there could imagine that they themselves were starring in the movie. It just seemed like it was happening to you, like it could happen to you or to anyone. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, all of the different screens, for pretty much the entire show. I wouldn't say it was too violent. The danger seemed real. It wasn't clear that we were going to be able to make it out of the tomb before the natives would go totally crazy and start slaughtering people. I thought that at least some of us would get picked off, especially the characters you hadn't really gotten to know, either by blowdarts or pungy sticks or a knife attack or tripwires that ring bells for the bats infected with Ebola. I thought that the old woman's curse meant that at least one of our group wouldn't make it out alive. It's true that most people don't really know what's in the U.S. Constitution. You should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for the loudest ever public service announcement. My friends and I always disagree about whether or not you actually have to have a driver's license or whether someone can just arbitrarily decide what the speed limit should be. Imagine if they had 3D technology in the Middle Ages. I still don't understand what counts as 4D and beyond 4D. At what point is it suddenly 5D? You really know how to take it down. You really know how to stretch it out and how to get folks pissed off. You really know how to make it worth the ride. You really know how to lighten things up and then suddenly you make them really heavy. It's good for people. I would say that the experience as a whole was definitely heavy, that my memory of it will be a heavy one. Everyone who was there, especially at the end, would agree. The night vision hunting video was intense. We had no idea what was out there. There wasn't a person who wasn't aware of how dangerous it was every step of the way at every moment. When it dawned on us that we were hunting people, the music was awesome. It made you want to get the job done no matter what. Again, the stop on a dime thing was perfect. When you perfect something like that, it's like you get a free pass to do it again and again. Like it's your duty to do it again and again. The whole thing made me think about what my duty might be if I had to choose just one. It made me think about, in the end, if it's all about selecting one duty and how I might figure out what that duty is. I spent a lot of time thinking about that even when everyone else was laughing and having a good time. All of the musicians' names were really cool. They really captured something about their personalities. It's like each one had their own special skill, but they were all part of the same mission. I would be scared to go on a nighttime hunt, even if it were more like an order from above than something you'd choose to do for fun and even if I had the same high-tech goggles as in the video. It would be awesome to have the same kinds of tunes blasting, but in real life you'd need to be able to stop to hear the snap of a twig. The only thing I didn't get was how the prisoners had escaped in the first place. I also didn't get at the end, did we get them all or is there a chance that there's still one of them lurking out there like they lived to protest another day? I lost count, but maybe you're not supposed to know. Two nights in a row was weird, but it got me thinking. It was weird how much the same it was from one night to the next. Sometimes I try to imagine how you even come up with all this stuff. My brother saw you on a different tour. He said it wouldn't have been the same thing. This show must have cost a fortune to produce. I guess it gets bigger every time. It has to get bigger every time. I think it's really expensive, but they were worth it, totally. Having paid that much money, this is exactly what I wanted to see. You take it to the next level, but you also make sure it's about traditional things. It's about cutting loose, but it's also about putting down roots. It's about standing up for the little guy, but also telling the haters, those little voices in the dark, they can fuck off. By the end I felt different. There is, in nearly every city I have lived in, a place where a very particular convergence of things and experiences may be found. I am drawn to such places by necessity. Once discovered, the recurrent series of intersections that serve to create this place become a paradoxical point of orientation by the very nature of their disorientating qualities. In any initial exploration or visit to a city, I have to find this place to feel settled, and if this residence extends to a longer period of time, my stay is characterised by frequent visitations. These places are recognisable by a series of recurring characteristics. For example, a journey of some complexity and indirection is needed to get to this place, usually involving some form of lower-value public transportation such as a bus that runs on a less-than-frequent cycle of regularity. Such a journey will lead you to the margins of an urban conurbation and often by default to close proximity to an airport. Proximity in this case would be experienced by standing on some street corner in this place and watching an aeroplane passing by overhead, undercarriage down, preparing to land. At this stage in their flight paths, the plane should be close enough for their markings to be distinguishable. But in my experience, no matter who the carrier or where the plane originated from, a very particular response is triggered. I would relive a first arrival in this city by imagining being on this plane at this precise moment in time. I would then picture myself being in two places at once, on this plane at this precise moment in time, looking down on this street corner, wondering who on this street corner might be looking up at this plane at this precise moment in time. A few moments ago, the same aeroplane could be seen reflected on the surface of a series of objects I'd left abandoned outside in the alleyway behind the building in which I live, a few miles south of where I now stand. First, the plane was seen to cut through the condensate forming on the upturned flat screen of a Sony television set. The electrical cable of this appliance was cut to the quick. Then, the plane momentarily glided across the blank informational display area of a Panasonic videocassette recorder placed as a dark monolith on its side next to the TV. The plastic flap designed to hide the negative space into which the videocassette would be pushed is missing, leaving this object aghast at its abandonment. For a moment, the plane then disappeared into the non-reflective surface of the paving slabs. Then, an increasingly faint impression of the fuselage was seen to reappear, delineated by a new flight path formed between two rows of buttons set within the dull grey plastic of a remote control handset. In the case of this object, the manufacturer's name was rubbed off in frequent use. This remote control is the final element of this composition. Having created this still life by depositing these three objects, I travelled to the place where I now stand, the place where the plane has caught up with me. The image of the plane as I now see it cuts to the image of a set of matching luggage as my eyes meet with the rain-flat window of the shop I am standing in front of. I enter, passing the neon open sign surrounded by images and advertisements pertaining to an imagined proximity through telecommunication. Walking up a slight incline of rubberised flooring, the aforementioned exterior convergence of objects, reflections and flight paths now becomes manifest in a different convergence within an interior space. I pass the rows of suitcases, none with any kind of recognisable manufacturer's name. But this is not a shop specialising in luggage. I've come to understand that none of the shops in these places really specialise in anything other than tools for the temporary correction of displacement. This is why I have come to this place. The proprietor is sitting on a camping chair behind an empty suitcase. The mutually maintained silence is punctuated only by his mouth, in a reverie of some sort of culinary memory. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him wrestle with a shard of bread and the remains of a sauce in a crumpled silver container, fingers yellow with turmeric and scattered brown cumin seeds. If I could, I would have chosen to undertake a similar kind of re-visitation of the past but utilising my abandoned tools of mechanical reproduction instead. However, my audio-visual appliances have no currency here and since my arrival on the plane, things and experiences without the video and the screen seem less defined, less present somehow. This is why I have come to this place. It is as if the man behind the counter knows all this as finally he seems to look at me with a mixture of pity and ridicule. In turning away from his gaze, another still life reveals itself. In the foreground is a glass counter where I am surveying a series of devices, black and grey plastic boxes that deal with a form of perceptual correction, the conversion of a television signal from POW to NTSC. These differing encoding systems re-divide land masses with new borders between nations and a form of seeing is dictated by the divisions of space created between these systems. The difference between NTSC and POW is 96 lines in an image. In the shop, the equipment used to correct this disparity looks much cheaper than its advertised cost. A range here of a display on top of boxes that demonstrate an art-less approach to branding, no doubt concealing a manual nestled within written with grammatical error as an organising principle. Stacked in the background behind the glass display counter, there are also boxes containing apparatus dealing with electrical regulation, the conversion of current from 220 volts to 120 volts. These heavy-duty objects perhaps have a greater sense of weight and gravitas. The borders shift again as I think of a map of differing voltages, frequencies, plugs and outlets that redraw geographical frontiers. But the proprietor knows as well as I do that the economics of this are uncomplicated. Simply buy a new television set in the same encoding system and voltage as the country you are now in. And of course it goes about saying that buying a replacement video cassette recorder would be an absurd plan of action. Our eyes collectively meet at a beautiful wall of new and fully functional televisions assembled towards the firing of the showroom. This is why I have come to this place. The picture repeated on all the screens is a crystal-clear image from a TV channel I do not recognise. The picture is a deserted thoroughfare somewhere just outside the city of Damascus. So for a very long time I thought I wanted to be cremated when I die, which is going to be very soon and it's going to be a huge relief because I'm a very bad sleeper. But sometimes I do doze off and have a dream about seeing a cock through a curtain or Matthew Ghoulish coming to pick me up in his car and bringing me to the Gemstone conference outside of Rochester, New York and because it's Matthew Ghoulish he'll say something like who's to say that a dead body doesn't have some form of consciousness and I'm looking down at the quartz crystal carnelian amethyst display and thinking well if these rocks are vibrating metaphysical effects onto me then why wouldn't a dead body and if that's the case then maybe there's an important experience to be had as a corpse the cremation cuts that experience off. The real question for me though is how much sugar can I eat every day and live forever because I want to enjoy my life and have half of my body always numb and to have this constant positive feedback looped in more and more sugar after that one time I ate the sugar and if I eat enough sugar you can cremate me and turn me into a pixie stick or caramel and then put it in your latte and then go sit somewhere for a prolonged period of time and there's a lot of different ways of sitting there's this there's this I have been trying to bring this one back and if you're too old or you're dead there's this and there's this mythology in a lot of ancient tribes about the magic of sitting and how every time you're sitting you're being simultaneously connected to everyone else in the world who is sitting and it looks like almost all of us are sitting is everyone okay with that? Does everyone feel like it's the right temperature in this room? I know it's hard to know it's hard to know how many layers to wear in a room with no windows if you're really confused about it you can just wait to see what I'm going to wear because what I'm going to wear is a very unique product all over sequence with pastel pleated skirt that goes down to my knees and motive prints and it kind of looks like like a wedding dress but it's actually overalls with spandex underneath it and I'm just sheathed sheathed in this thing that looks right for my shape this like A-line empire waist with like open neck but like open chest to distract from everything else I need to take attention from the middle I need this like hourglass illusion with tufts of glitter on the sleeve and embellished horizontal stripes and the last time I lost my mind I was sitting right there waiting to get on and Robin just whispered in my ear you know if you want to stop obsessively thinking all the time you're going to have to do it while you're in the plank position and the idea behind this is that when you're in the plank position everything you're thinking starts to become completely meaningless because your body becomes so exhausted and so the unicorn is an Aquarius with the Chinese zodiac sign of the horse unicorns are energetic they're smart they're funny that's the good news the bad news is that they can be totally self-obsessed and over eccentric in all the wrong direction because you can't keep a unicorn in one place unless it's their idea to be there famous unicorns include Ashton Kutcher Renee Russo Norman Rockwell and George Clooney if I'm going to stand behind the podium I could have a terrible posture I could like stick a leg out kind of peek it out right here or I can really lean in and pretend I'm listening even though I'm probably thinking about some pedestrian subject matter like how I'm going to go to that falafel place that we once went to together but it's not going to be as delicious this time because now I'm doing it alone and then after I'm doing whatever the hell I'm doing up here I'll probably go sit next to that guy and then I'll go sit on a plane so that I can go back to Chicago and sit in my bed, that's right I sleep sitting up and I love sitting so much I don't want to be a babysitter but I did not know what SIDS was His spirit is transferred into a naked couple having sex and in another corner is this crystal that's surrounded by a rainbow that represents enlightenment but for the most part you're so desperate and unattractive when you're dead because it looks like you have a neaten in weeks or something has frightened you or you're just like freezing because you're outside of everyone's inside jokes and politicians don't interest you and you feel very sorry for yourself indeed and all you can do is wait to see what I'm going to wear and it better take Medicaid because it's going to have this like lacy thing down the back and like buttons up over on my head and like around my eyes so like I need like help getting around every time I wear it and like I can't see you but you can see me because it has this like extra hood this like wooden material at the top but like everything else is just like this muslin wrapped around my entire body and my arms so that when I enter the room and you approach me I can't reach out to give you a hug so now that you guys are all looking at me now that you're all such good lookers even though I really only see about two beautiful people I'm going to tell you what I really came here to do which is save you from all of your terrible boyfriends and girlfriends it's that time of year it is that you guys need to break the plate you're eating lunch on someone's got to break someone's leg no break two legs that's right you and two casts for three months sitting on the couch watching tour de France high and pharmaceutical opiates putting the throw rugs away because they're too easy to trip on while you're crawling to the kitchen to get the appliances you put somewhere easily reachable and if your bedroom is upstairs and the living room is downstairs bring all those blankets and pillows down you're going to want to sleep on the couch it's just too hard to get back up those stairs and it's not worth the risk when you already love sitting so much thank you thank you Matthew for convening and framing this event of the institute of failure under the title broken red balloon dog new york edition and thanks to the prelude festival for hosting it and the curators Tom seller and producer thanks also to all the writers who contributed their text and to it tomorrow for performing Abby's contribution I very much look forward to reading the text and seeing documentation of the event I'm really sorry to have to miss it by way of conclusion here we go Matthew you may remember once we presented an event with the institute of failure at the foundation Cartier at 261 boulevard rapsail in Paris I had traveled that day I don't remember where from but I know I was exhausted after the journey and the immediate work we had to do on arrival preparing the space for the performance and running through the text our only rehearsal once we had done it all there were still a couple of hours or so before the gig and after grabbing a bite to eat I decided to take a rest in the dressing room the dressing room was stylish but to be honest not really kitted out for people that want to sleep it looked good but lacked account in the end I folded my sweatshirt as a makeshift pillow and lay on the polished concrete floor asking you to wake me sometime before the performance it's a skill that performers often develop I think an ability to sleep anywhere to grab a chance at resting and refocusing in a performance or rehearsal often when we are touring I grab sleep in the theater itself preferring to stay in the room where the work will happen rather than going to some isolated subterranean space often lying in the chasm between two rows of folded back theater seats invisible to others face to the floor back in Paris I'm not sure what my exact request was concerning when exactly I asked you to wake me up this is a good few years ago and my memory is pretty hazy but I do remember that you woke me calling to me as I lay in a deep sleep on the floor of the darkened dressing room and I think shaking my shoulder as I wasn't waking quickly I remember looking up at you and that you were already there back lit by the bright electric light standing and holding your text and ready to go on to the stage and I remember that you were saying that it was time to go time to go on and that you were gesturing to the door of the dressing room I was quite seriously confused thinking that it was impossible that you would choose to wake me so close to the moment of the performance so close to going on stage in the confusion I was fighting off sleep getting up from the floor shaking my head I was taking a drink of water that strange underwater feeling of unreality that one has sometimes on waking suddenly we walked out of the dressing room still bleary eyed I can't remember which of us went first I think it was you I followed I remember that the gallery space was all installed with an exhibition related to Paul Virilio and the idea of velocity post-modernity speed and so on hyper speed, hyper velocity but I was hyper slow not remotely up to speed it was dark and the space lit red quite techno feeling rather inhospitable the audience seated on shiny folding metal plastic chairs we sat at our small table separate tables and you began to read I remember looking at the audience dumbly trying to read them to make contact then looking across at you as you read me staring head still thick with sleep more or less uncomprehending eventually you got to the end of the first couple of paragraphs and looked over at me and I realized then that that moment it was my turn to speak I looked down, eyes swimming over the words to find a place a hand hold and started to read from the third paragraph in front of me again this strange sense of coming to finding the task whilst already doing it in fact of finding myself slowly line by line fragment by fragment as I was speaking there I think it took 20 minutes or so before I felt truly human truly present in the room fully materialized in control of my tongue brain coordination able to compose or position myself in respect to the room but then again isn't performance always a bit like this in any case a matter of slowly coming to in a strange environment on the stage so close to the real world and yet in a strange sense so far away from it a matter of finding one's feet pulling oneself together as I write this I think of you Matthew as you are reading this text with which in the time since I sent it to you yesterday you have had at least a chance to gain a kind of familiarity and yet I think none the less you must be in a particular way still in precisely such a process of coming to inside of it negotiating the strange twists and turns which I have built into it from pieces of alphabet searching for your connection to it looking perhaps for the memento vivare or signs of life that inhabit this text as your attention is focused on this task I take the opportunity to visit that moment in Paris again only this time with our roles reversed it's me that is ready to move things along and you who are asleep sleep like a haggard orpheus fresh from the underworld reading in a spell of reading sleeping Matthew it is time to wake up Matthew it is time to wake up I touch you on the shoulder I think Matthew you're getting up from the floor shaking your head taking a drink of water grabbing your papers or along the timeline you're looking down starting to read from the text in front of you back then in the fondation Cartier in Paris and now here on stage in New York and anyway with this strange sense of coming to of awakening of finding your feet in the task whilst already doing it in fact with a sense of finding yourself slowly line by line fragment by fragment even as you are speaking these words could be the pieces of your broken self that you navigate to bring the shape of some remembered wholeness back into view thinking at the same time what an insignificant interval separates us from death thinking in remembering in living in reading in performing when a hand touches your shoulder and a voice behind you asks Matthew are you okay you've been staring at that broken dog for some time