MIART: Frank Wasser

Booth E05, First Floor, Emergent Section, Allianz Mico - South Wing, Milan

 

 

COMMUNE is excited to exhibit at MIART Milan for the first time with new work by Frank Wasser, including a durational performance in which he will inhabit the booth at intervals throughout the fair, assuming the persona of an Irish barman.  Wasser’s performance ‘A Swift Half’ will unfold behind a wooden bar erected within the space, accompanied by a display of related found objects, archival artefacts and ephemera central to Wasser’s research. These will include a traditional Guiness light sign, Jamieson bar mirror, photographs, archival documentation and a keg of Guiness that emanates a light smell activating an additional sensory response from the audience.

 

The title ‘A Swift Half’—is a play on words that evokes both a quick drink and a reference to the metafictional writer Jonathan Swift, who lived close to where Wasser grew up in the working-class Dublin neighbourhood known as The Liberties (also home to the Guiness factory). In this role, Wasser will deliver fragmented narratives that move fluidly between fiction and lived experience. This new performance would draw from an evolving script, a hybrid digital and analogue text incorporating multiple registers of storytelling, archival material, and theoretical reflection while engaging with literary figures such as Flann O’Brien, John B. Keane—himself a barman—and Jonathan Swift. Through this layered dramaturgy, Wasser evokes interwoven narratives of identity, institutional authority, cultural memory, and resistance.