the european biennial of contemporary art
manifesta 7 logo

artists

Glen Neath

1965, Sheffield, UK Lives in London, UK

The Breach, 2008 Text

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

Glen Neath’s novels and plays often challenge the notion of authorship: in his novel The Outgoing Man (2005), an outgoing man reads a postcard to an incoming man telling of the adventures of a third man, the man who was outgoing when the now outgoing man was incoming. By this method the story is further and further removed from the reader. In his new book The Fat Plan (2008), the first person narrator sees the story is going nowhere and so relieves the author of the narrative, inserts himself into it as another character and tells his own fictional version of the story as he imagines it from that point on. In Romcom , his collaboration with Rotozaza, two unrehearsed actors meet on stage for the first time and say lines fed to them by an unseen authorial voice. And in his adaptation of Max Frisch’s novel Gantenbein , the actors themselves try on identities like clothes, and the titular character seemingly has no more relevance than the other people the actor decides to play. The text written for Manifesta 7 again questions the identity of the author as a voice seems to address the spectator directly before shifting its emphasis elsewhere. In response to Fortezza / Franzensfeste a mind battles to maintain sovereignty over its own body.


Location

FORTEZZA/FRANZENSFESTE

ADAM BUDAK, ANSELM FRANKE/HILA PELEG, RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE: "SCENARIOS"

FORTE ASBURGICO, EISACKTAL/VALLE ISARCO,
FRANZENSFESTE/FORTEZZA, ITALY

more