"Want it, get it, fake it!"

Duration: three hours, 2006

Performed: June 10^th, 2006
Exhibition: Ivan Civic - Breeding brass pearls, Galleria Estro, Padova, Italy
Curator: Emanuela Nobile Mino

Performed: July 12^th, 2006
Exhibition: Meisterschueler der HBK Braunschweig, BS, Germany
Curator: students from HBK Braunschweig

Performed: September 29^th, 2006
Exhibition: Premio Internazionale della Performance, Dro, Italy
Curator: Fabio Cavallucci

Performed: December 12^th, 2006
Exhibition: Ivan Civic - Want it, get it, fake it!,
Galleria L'Union, Roma, Italy
Curator: Emanuela Nobile Mino

Performed: January 24^th, 2007
Exhibition: "Bankrot" Ivan Civic and Herma Wittstock,
Karlin studios, Prague, Czhech Republic
Curator: Alberto di Stefano

The project consists of the three-hour, non-stop performance WANT IT, GET IT, FAKE IT at the opening as well as photographic- and video-works directly linked to it. The project presents itself as a sort of (shocking, irreverent but, at the same time, quite ironic) confession of an artist on his natural ‘dance-floor’ –the gallery- as well as the disenchanted process of his own illusions. By playing the role of the hero in a game constantly on the verge of being over, the artist seems engaged in a sort of tiring challenge against himself and in a repetitive check-up of his own attitudes and potentialities, physical as well as behavioural. Through a glary mise-en-scène of efforts and demonstrations of social skills, the artist plays out different strategies aiming at attaining success in addition to cultural and social upgrade. The goal is revealing the precariousness of specific certainties (as, for instance, apparently attaining higher levels towards fame) and, at the same time, warning of the cruel cyclic nature of time and events. It intermittently brings about the confrontation with challenges that one thought had long overcome disguised as sudden and unexpected social downgrades. Disenchanting himself and his audience on the idea that the artistic and individual development is a linear and vertical progression, plays out a looped action developed through the convulsive alternation of different recourses, of advances and obstacles, of ups and downs, of growths and recessions. A final and definite solution is hardly foreseeable.

That is when the figurative image of ‘breeding brass pearls’ comes into play; it functions as a mirror of man’s daily condition: being constantly exposed to the risk of disenchanting their own hopes and chased by the nightmare of seeing the projects in which they believe and invest failing. As symbol of creation, luxury, wonder and synonym of pride and boast, the pearl is imagined here as if made of ‘brass.’ Automatically, it appears as if it had lost any of its innate characteristics. From treasure, it turns into an object purely evocative of the value it naturally characterises it. It becomes then metaphor of pure appearance, deceitfulness and expedient. And it is actually the idea of de-naturalisation –and the consequent bewilderment- that the artist seems to want to play out. He plays out all the disconnected stages of a life spent tiresomely moving from the golden sphere of reflection and creativity to the uneven and insidious path to the much-longed-for social recognition.