wideo, 4’
1990
In this filmic self-portrait, in which he appears with deer antlers on his head, Robakowski plays ironically with his own image. The video is shown in reverse: the smoke from his cigarette doesn’t drift up but is instead sucked down. Following the tradition of artist-clowns, Robakowski often mocked artistic myths, especially the modernist celebration of the ‘creative individual’, usually embodying the latter himself. A champion of his own, highly personal cinema, he subjects his image to ruthless vivisection. A year later he wrote, in the text The Magic of the Looking Glass: ‘A mirror image is perfect for practicing “your own art” – so we clown, utter absurdities, make stupid faces and banal gestures . . . No wonder that the mirror has seduced so many artists of our world – including, no doubt, also myself.’
Joseph’s Will was used in the video installation Mr Deer (Autoepitaph) (1990–1994) which, as the artist wrote in an accompanying text, ‘deals with the meagre existence of the contemporary artist as a naïve clown, ass-licker, and author of beautiful things and ideas’.
