Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Jack Smith at The Modern Institute, 14–20 Osborne Street, Glasgow, 24 January–24 March, 2015.

Jack Smith (1932–1989) is a central figure in the cultural history of downtown New York film, performance, and art. He began producing work in the late 1950s and became one of the most accomplished and influential artists working in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Inspired by 1960s subcultures of New York, underground film and experimental performance, Smith created a fantastical world fiction around his disgust with contemporary American consumer culture and a fascination with faux-Hollywood, as well as Orientalist exoticism. Through his own artistic and personal exploits, Smith developed a truly eccentric and captivating persona. Over the course of three decades, he transformed downtown New York into a theatrical environment for his ventures in film and photography.

Anna Viebrock studied stage design at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her collaboration with Christoph Marthaler has taken her to numerous theatres such as the Volksbühne Berlin, the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Frankfurt Opera, the Opéra de Paris, the Teatro Real Madrid, the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals, the Wiener Festwochen, the Festival d’Avignon and the Schauspielhaus Zürich, where she was a member of the management team until summer 2004. Since 1994, she has worked on opera productions with the Jossi Wieler/Sergio Morabito directing team and designed stages for René Pollesch and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.