Tim Youd has been performing literary classics in site-specific locations in a unique project he calls "regional conceptualism". Starting this week on Wednesday the 17th, he will perform Charles Bukowski's POST OFFICE in its entirety at the location in which the novel takes place: the Downtown Los Angeles Terminal Annex Post Office.
Here's an excerpt from the novel's first page:
It began as a mistake.
It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this leather sack on my back and was hiking around at my leisure. What a job, I thought. Soft! They only gave you a block or two and if you managed to finish, the regular carrier would give you another block to carry, or maybe you'd go back in and the soup would give you another, but you just took your time and shoved those Xmas cards in the slots.
I think it was my second day as a Christmas temp that this big woman came out and walked around with me as I delivered letters. What I mean by big was that her ass was big and her tits were big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit crazy but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care.
Fresh from his critically acclaimed typing performance of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn on the Brooklyn sidewalk outside of Miller’s boyhood home, Tim Youd is continuing his page turning performances all over the country. Dubbed “regional conceptualism”, Youd performs the works in locales geographically related to either the author’s life or the plot of the novel. And he utilizes the same make and model typewriter used by the author in its original creation, typing the novel on a single page run through the machine over and over.
The gallery will be offering free limited edition prints of the artist's "Self Portrait Reading Bukowski's Post Office" by hosting a Bukowski trivia raffle & will also give away a print to those who display their Bukowski tattoo to the artist during the performance.
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