John C. Welchman Lecture: ''Actions Against the State: Paul McCarthy's Pirate Project'' - NICC - Jun 29 '09 - Belgium

NICC, Tulpstraat 79, 2060 Antwerpen, Belgium

Departing from a close reading of McCarthy's Pirate Project, LaLa Land and Parody Paradise (Haus der Kunst, Munich and Whitechapel, London), John C. Welchman discusses some of the wider social, political and esthetic questions raised by his work in performance, mega-installation, drawing and video. McCarthy engages with multiple declensions of the piratic including the inheritance of Anglo-European pirate lore, a densely associative redistribution of the pirate persona and the slapstick reconstitution of sea-bandit Americana.