“Whoever Shows: Strike Uyp th’ Band!” is a staged reading at the New Museum of a collaged collection of excerpts from Raymond Pettibon’s scripts, including those originally produced for videos like The Whole World is Watching: Weatherman ’69 (1989–90), Sir Drone: A New Film About the New Beatles (1989–90), The Holes You Feel, Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison, and Batman. Beginning in the 1980s, Pettibon produced a series of low-fi videos made with friends and shot on commercial home video equipment. These feature-length works focus on radical subjects drawn from 1960s and ’70s American counterculture, including the Manson Family, the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the SLA, the Weather Underground, and the beginning of the American punk movement. Although some of these works like The Whole World is Watching and Sir Drone have become classic video works of the period and have been shown widely alongside Pettibon’s signature drawings, several other scripts like Andy Warhol and Jim Morrison have yet to be produced or, in the case of The Holes You Feel, were staged and shot but ultimately lost.
Reflecting upon the notion of collaborative work, this assemblage of Pettibon’s fragmentary scripts, scenes, and lyrics attempts to envision personal perspectives and imaginative approaches to the historical past and the edges of society. This event at the New Museum is one of only a handful of select public readings of his scripts that Pettibon has organized over the past several years. The continuous reading at the New Museum will feature an ensemble of artists, musicians, and Pettibon’s friends.
Participants include Oliver Augst, Mark Beasley, Veronique Bourgoin, Angela Choon, Jonny Cournoyer, Brian D’Amato, Pauline Daly, Marcel Dzama, Ray Farrell, Thomas Fehlmann, Kim Gordon, Sozita Goudouna, David Larsen, Young Kim, Spencer Leigh, Charles Louis-Aristide, David Rimanelli, Sven Sachsalber, Stella Schnabel, Ricky Sepulveda, Frances Stark, Robert Storr, Juli Susin, Dirk Vandenberg, Mitchell Watkins, Mike Watt, Hans Weigand, and Lauren Wolchik.
Directed by Raymond Pettibon and produced by Sozita Goudouna.