Guided Tour
REALIDAD PROGRAMADA: RECORRIDO CON MICHAEL SMITH Y KIT HAMMONDS

The artist Michael Smith and Kit Hammonds, curator of Scripted Reality, will do a guided tour through the exhibition to talk about the television impact in everyday life, as well as the artistic proposals that present television as object, medium and subject. They will talk about Smith’s work It Starts at Home (1982) included in the show, in which “Mike”, his alter ego, gets caught in a cable transmission as the leading role of his own tv show.

Michael Smith uses wry humor in his practice to pitch the everyday experiences of aging and failure against the aspirational images projected by corporate and institutional cultures. “Mike”, the artist’s alter-ego, is often featured in his works, and his experiences reflect upon the integrated nature of business and culture. From this perspective, and for all its playfulness, Mike’s adventures as a whole enable a form of institutional critique. Smith has exhibited internationally at festivals and institutions including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and has been professor of performance art at the University of Texas at Austin since 2001.

Kit Hammonds is Curator of Museo Jumex. He has a PhD from Kingston University. He has organized exhibitions in Europe, Asia and America, such as CAFAM Biennale, Beijing (2014), and the Goethe Institute’s European project (2010-2013). He was Director of The Showroom, London (2011). Between 2015 and 2017 he was a Visiting Professor in Curating at the National Taipei University of Education. He was formerly Senior Tutor in Curating at the Royal College of Art, London (2006-2015). Besides, he has experience in the publication of artist books. He co-founded Publish and Be Damned (2004-2014), Index Art Book Fair and the Vernacular Institute (2014) with the project The Editorial which was part of the Taipei Biennale (2016).