John Bock

John Bock was born in 1965 in Gribbohm. He lives and works in Berlin. At the opening night of the exhibition the artist gave a ‘lecture’ performance dedicated to the musician Alice Cooper.

Bock uses the lecture ‘performance’ as an artistic medium. He tries to recreate simple structures of life as well as art’s evolution into abstract forms and paranoid models.

Psychological strategies of life are analyzed by mathematical methods and they transform into models of modern society.

In his lectures Bock combines speech, dramatic elements and sculptures-objects. He performs on ‘stage’, which is made of various tables or original wooden constructions.

The objects he makes use of are handmade, most of the times made out of fabric, remade clothes, or different electric devices such as blenders or vacuum cleaners, but also plastic diagrams that represent his mathematical interpretations.

After each lecture, the objects that he has used are left on stage creating a theatre-collage. His lectures are various and many times he uses amateur actors. At his last performances there is an old recorder that plays pop or classical music. His lectures are videotaped and incorporated in the Installation for the full length of the exhibition.

In May 2000 he presented 4 performances in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA).