Let Me Tell You About This Shoe

Performance at Orgelsaal at Toni Areal in Zürich, Switzerland
as a part of Ongoing Manifesto of Radical Dependency,
a commissioned research project by School of Commons

December 2022

Let Me Tell You About This Shoe is a performance work, as a part of a larger research project called Ongoing Manifesto of Radical Dependency.

The character arrives late to a party with a gift - a found sole of a shoe that supports strips of embroidered fabric - that they then unwrap and read for the audience. Embroidered on each strip is one of 25 points from an ongoing Manifesto for Radical Dependency. The audience for this particular iteration were primarily participants and the adjacent community of School of Commons, a yearly project for commissioned artistic research and collective learning.

Taking the form of a rushed stand-up set, Let Me Tell You About This Shoe positions the presentation of artistic research and work as gift-giving, using humour as a vehicle to recall, reiterate, and propose modes of artistic, learning, and citation practices that challenge the illusion of an untethered individual, enforced by neoliberal mantras for independent labour and success with an origin in colonial exploitation and societal oppression.

You can read that manifesto handout as it was provided to the audience here,
And view the "new money" gifted to the audience here.

Let Me Tell You About This Shoe, found shoe sole with embroidered textile, toothpicks, and coloured epoxy resin
Let Me Tell You About This Shoe, found shoe sole with embroidered textile, toothpicks, and coloured epoxy resin
Let Me Tell You About This Shoe, found shoe sole with embroidered textile, toothpicks, and coloured epoxy resin
Let Me Tell You About This Shoe, found shoe sole with embroidered textile, toothpicks, and coloured epoxy resin
Let Me Tell You About This Shoe, found shoe sole with embroidered textile, toothpicks, and coloured epoxy resin
Click image for manifesto text with expanded annotations.
Let Me Tell You About This Shoe (excerpts from live performance, December 2022)
Video documentation by Pule kaJanolitji and Joseph Baan