The Screw (1963)

Plot Summary

Video documentation of Tambellini’s 1963 performance art piece, The Screw, a biting satire aimed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum who agreed to accept a new sculpture created by Tambellini in 1963. It’s a perfect example of Tambellini’s wit and contempt for systems of power and capital. In true Aldo fashion, he assembled a group of local teenagers who wanted to learn how to perform as a barber shop quartet. He wrote a song for them to perform, split the commission, and created a public spectacle presenting both museums with The Screw—a literal “screw you” to the nihilistic institutions Tambellini called out for violating the ethics of artistic citizenship through their promotion of commercialized, mainstream, docile, and apolitical art work. Tambellini’s performance incorporates the poetic, the spectacle, the musical, the satirical, and the sculptural.

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