Joachim West was asked to speak at CentralTrak in Dallas following their successful "Draftsmen of the Apocalypse" exposition. Joachim chose Thor, his good friend and partner in crime to help to escape the usual tedium of an artist talk and to turn the talk into a work of performance art. Together, Thor and Joachim went about recording a video which they lip-synked for about half the show. At one point, Thor got up to go to the bathroom, ruining the lip-sinking illusion. Upon returning to his seat a confrontation ensued where Joachim tore Thor Johnson's art off of the wall of the gallery, tore it into many pieces and threw them at Thor before storming out of the gallery. Thor then reassembled the pieces into a collage while the video finished playing. After the confrontation, several members of the audience, plants with Contre Culture, were instructed to start laughing erratically and to stop on cue. To add to the tension, Joachim and Thor decided to leave out the cue that would cause them to stop laughing. At the end of the video, Joachim returned and the collage was given to Heyd Fontenot as a thank you for setting up the event.
For the question and answer phase of the artist's talk, all questions were dodged and answers were given to questions that weren't asked in the style of true politicians. This was once again a nod of the hat to Christina Rees's review of the "Draftsmen of the Apocalypse" show on Glasstire.
"I couldn’t help but think about how much more trustworthy these artists seem than some of the current crop of young regional abstractionists who are mostly just politicians spinning their burgeoning careers."
http://glasstire.com/2014/11/03/draftsmen-of-the-apocalypse/
http://artsandculturetx.com/musings-2/
http://www.dallasobserver.com/calendar/what-is-an-artist-talk-6434788