Sound Library
Art After Death
Yves Klien SPeaks! Lecture
Lights go down, sound comes up: the voice of professional trance medium Valerie Winborne speaking as the spirit of the infamous French artist Yves Klein. Klein muses on his work, his reputation, his legacy, his dreams. Lights come up, and the authors of "Yves Klein Speaks!," Anne Walsh and Chris Kubick, step to the lectern. For the next hour, Walsh and Kubick lead the audience on a journey that explores biography, storytelling, spirituality, art history, and mythology.
The primary material of their performance is a series of audio recordings documenting "interviews" Walsh and Kubick conducted in 20001 with Yves Klein at the San Francisco MOMA, the Menil Collection, and a private collection in NYC. Professional spirit mediums were brought by Walsh and Kubick to the galleries, and in the presence of Klein's works, his spirit was invoked, with the mediums serving as translators and interpreters for his messages.
"Yves Klein Speaks!" presents audio excerpts of the five mediums through whom Klein communicated, framed by a Walsh and Kubick's narration, and slides of Klein's works, paper ephemera, family photos, historical photos, and video stills. The narration includes discussion of the various ethical and practical issues involved in the making of the "Art After Death" series of which the Klein work is a part: the odd conflation of art historians and spirit mediums; the uncanny "truths" which emerge; the meaning of "inspiration"; the ownership of an artist's legacy, and much more.
For more on this project, please visit the page devoted to our compact disc, Yves Klein Speaks!,volume 2 of our Art After Death series.