Official Welcome

Directed by Andrea Fraser

Official Welcome begins as a thank-you speech by an artist at an event organized in her honor. After the initial Thanks however, the Artist´s position changes from speaking about her supportersto speaking as her supporters about herself. She continues as eight different pairs of Artists and supporters with a script based on artists´ interviews, patron profiles, critics´ essays and curators´ speeches. Official Welcome attempts to engage the contradictory desire of artists tobe loved and admired even as we critique and transgress. It catalogs the play of bad faith and sincerity, cynicism and commitment, denial and ambivalence that haunt the rituals of recognition of human accomplishment in the arts. Commissioned by and first performed in 2001 at the MICA foundation in New York, this DVD documents Fraser´s opening performance at her mid-career survey at the Kunstverein in Hamburg.