“Portrait of Michel Auder”

Curated by Miguel Wandschneider

Michel Auder edits his intimate video diaries out of more than five thousand hours of footage shot since the late 1960s. Ranging in length from ultrabrief to a few minutes to epic, Auder’s videos collectively constitute a dispersed autobiography—with a voyeur’s stratagem of picturing the self through others—chronicling demimonde adventures, rocky marriages to Viva and Cindy Sherman, as well as his own heroin addiction. Culturgest presents a generous selection from this ample oeuvre, including screenings of Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol (1971–76/1994), Portrait of Alice Neel (1976–1983/1999), and A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking (1980), among many other works; meanwhile, more “nonnarrative” pieces will be installed in its galleries. This June, Kunsthalle Basel opens a corresponding show, producing, with Culturgest, an appropriately voluminous catalogue of essays, synopses, and transcripts.