Edition of 270 copies. Fullcolour cover and innersleeve by Dorothy Iannone. "When I was living in France in 1975, I made an audio cassette singing some lines from a famous German song: 'Wenn keiner treu Dir bliebe, ich bleib Dir ewig grün, Du meine alte Liebe, Berlin bleibt doch Berlin.' [When no one stays by you, I'll remain forever true, my old love, you, Berlin will always stay Berlin.]
Maybe the song was on my mind because I had just received the news that I had been awarded a DAAD artist grant for the following year. I was home alone that evening and, after painting for some hours, I decided that, since I still had a lot of energy I would make an audio cassette. And so, i set up my simple equipment on the floor by my bedside. I didn't have any particular plan when I started to sing, but somehow, as I went along, I began caressing myself and my voice changed according to my feelings. But yet despite what I was feeling, the discipline was to keep singing those same four lines. The voice itself expressed the stages of sexual arousal. Shortly before orgasm, I was almost completely breathless and could hardly continue repeating the lines between gasps, and then suddenly, as the orgasm began, my voice became really strong and loud, soaring into the air for some moments b!efore subsiding as I, very softly, managed to utter the concluding lines.'
By all accounts something of a bohemian grande dame, Dorothy Iannone (b.1933) has a colourful and varied biography peppered with intense friendships with male artists and writers, all of which are integral to an appreciation of her art, particularly because her personal mythology, experiences, feelings and relationships are often the subjects of her work. A literature graduate, she illegally imported Henry Miller novels in the early 1960s into the USA and successfully contested their censorship at trial. But her life-changing moment came slightly later, in 1967, when she took a cruise from New York to Iceland with her then husband. Waiting for them on a pier was artist Dieter Roth, holding a fish. He and Iannone became lovers, Iannone left her husband, and she and Roth remained companions until 1974, and lifelong friends until his death in 1998. During their time together they were immersed in the vibrant Dusseldorf Fluxus scene, although she would later inscribe on a piece: 'I am she who is not Fluxus.' While they were together Iannone's practice matured from her take on Abstract Expressionism to a multimedia, ornamental, figurative and folkish style shamelessly celebrating what she describes as her 'ecstatic unity' with her lover. In 1976, after receiving a DAAD scholarship to come to Berlin, Iannone moved to the city where she still resides and holds court today. (Frieze Magazine)