Around 2 o'clock pm on July 28th 1962 I tried to drink 5 meters of bandage in a bar on the Grimaud beach

Free tags: 

Alcool

Creator: 

Erik Dietman

Performer: 

Erik Dietman

Bibliographical sources: 

in catalogue Erik Dietman, 15 juin-29 août 1994, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, pp.184-187

Occurence: 

Places: 

Bar de la plage

Starting date: 

07 28 1962

5 minutes

Topology: 

bar/restaurant/hotel

Adress: 

Grimaud

France

Description: 

Erik Dietman tried to drink 5 meters of bandage. Excerpt from Olle Granath’s text Transes (to Van Garde), L'Irrégulier n°3, Galerie Zannettacci, Geneva 1982 :

"there is a series of photographs dating from one of his first years in France, at the beginning of the 60s. We can see him in a bar on the coast, in Sainte-Maxime, swallowing 5 meters of bandage with the help of an unknown quantity of pints of beer. These amusing images often make those who look at them laugh. But they cannot be considered as a mere comment on an ordinary stomach injury. The wound that needed healing was located in language itself. In Sweden, he had been defeated and knocked out by bureaucratic language, to which he could not identify himself, by a society that refused to accept his irregularities and his basic pacifism. In France, he was considered to be a foreigner. But he was not the only one to be wounded because of a lack of the right language. Everything he saw on his way reflected his own situation and expressly cried out for bandages. Which is how Erik Dietman became the King of Band-Aids" […]