I’m a dog shit ashtray
I’m a shrugging moustache, wearing a Speedo tuxedo
I’m a movie with no plot, written in the backseat of a piss-powered taxi
I’m an imperial armpit, sweating Chianti
I’m a toilet with no seat, flushing tradition down
I’m socialist lingerie, I’m diplomatic techno
I’m gay pastry and racist cappuccino
I’m an army on holiday in a guillotine museum
I’m a painting made of hair on a nudist beach eating McDonald’s
I’m a novel far too long
I’m a sentimental song
I’m a yellow tooth waltzing with wraparound shades on.
Who am I?
I am Europe.
Chilly Gonzales
I AM EUROPE is a cycle composed of three different performances that weren’t initially thought of as a trilogy. Only when rehearsals were already under way for the last piece, Tear Gas, did the three shows exchange energy and momentum. I decided to call them I AM EUROPE, the title of a song by Chilly Gonzales that manages to achieve what I am attempting to create with this cycle: to build up and exhibit an identity that lies halfway between the (debatable) label of the “Judeo-Christian tradition” of Europe and my own biography. This is a recurrent process in my work, to channel the tension between the universal and the domestic, between mystery and reason (George Steiner say that Europe is a Tale of Two Cities that invoke”the tension between Greeks and Jews”, the tension between the legacies of Athens and Jerusalem). I AM EUROPE is the depiction of an anthropomorphic map of Europe in three different tempos.