Next event: Ear Here, Democracy in Action & Gamelan Mobilel et al. →
PLEASE LEAVE
by Eric Andersen
The largest court room in the building was furnished with a big monitor and VHS player at the judge’s seat, a video crew at the prosecutor’s seat and Eric Andersen equipped with a toaster, hotplate, saucepan, smoked Scottish wild salmon, green asparagus, excellent bread, vintage Mersault wine and Pall Mall cigarettes at the defence counsel’s seat. In addition to this white china plates, silver cutlery, crystal wineglasses as well as white pepper and virgin salt from Læsø. The seat of the accused was empty.
The audience took their seats. The doors were closed, and Eric Andersen asked everybody to leave the room. When no one followed his instructions, he offered to bribe every single audience member to make them leave the courtroom. There were many offers: a fancy dinner, a nice glass of wine, a cigarette, a sequence from a pornographic movie or Danish peasant and manor folklore, a dance, an undressing or a dressing, a fictitious story, a secret, a childhood event, an open or closed window, opening or closing the curtains, turning the light on or off etc.
After two hours and countless bribes, the last member of the audience left the courtroom. Among the audience was the resident judge, who left as number seventeen after smoking a Pall Mall.
In the autumn later that year, PLEASE LEAVE was performed with a substantial amount of props at Emily Harvey Gallery on Broadway in New York. Like isolated islands in a sea of audience members, the three performers were equipped with a variety of audiovisual means. At the entrance everyone was given a number, in the style of marathon runners’ serial numbers. Thus the three performers were able to approach everyone individually during the process of the performance. By means of different forms of persuasion everyone was asked to leave the room.
The performance was successful after five hours. Everyone except for the first one to leave the room received a badge at the exit stating: I wasn’t the first person who left a performance by Eric Andersen.
1985
An altogether unusual sentence was passed to those who dared to enter the court and jail on Railroad Street. The sentence was passed on by Eric Andersen, a Fluxus artist from Copenhagen and in all its simplicity it sounded like this: - get lost everybody!”
Dagbladet May 31, 1985
1985
“A TV with a video recorder was placed in the judge’s seat for no apparent reason. Eric Andersen was sitting in a corner with a toaster and some bread, a pot on a hotplate in order for him to keep his green asparagus warm, a portion of fresh smoked salmon, butter and several bottles of an excellent white wine, a Mersault chateau bottling from 1979, cigarettes and a stopwatch.
At the beginning of the play he welcomed everybody and at the same time he asked everybody to leave while assuring them that absolutely nothing of interest would be taking place. This was actually not quite true. Yours truly was able to endure this for an hour despite the fact that Eric Andersen terrorized the audience with clips from three awful movies such as The Cavling Castle, Flashdance and a bedside movie with Ole Søltoft. In every way Andersen tried to persuade people to leave – for example by offering to open or close the window, or offering to prepare a salmon sandwich or poor a glass of wine or by giving cigarettes away. All this was actually reason enough for everybody to stay and enjoy his elegant rhetoric and humorous attempts at persuasion. Every time the audience expressed their wish to stay Andersen turned their words around in order to make them leave. Finally it became too much for the photographer. He offered to leave if he could have the last bottle of wine- and this was of course too good an offer for this reporter. Some of the audience simply seized the rest of the food and the party continued outside with salmon sandwiches and wine.”
Torben Weirup. “Da Avantgarde kom til Korsbæk.” Kunstavisen p. 13, 1985
1985
”Copenhagen’s own Eric Andersen is a more cerebral enfant terrible and specializes in audience-participation events. (…) his wittiest and wickedest event was at the courthouse, where after purchasing a ticket to enter a hearing room, one was told to leave since nothing was going to happen. Andersen had to quell the revolt and subtly impose his will through arguments, subterfuges and seductions that he improvised as he went along, but peopler later exchanged stories about how they had managed to escape.”
- Henry Martin, Art News / September 1985
1985
4PM ERIC ANDERSEN - Thing og Arresthuset
It took place in the courthouse and those unlucky enough to have paid to go in were immediately told they should leave again and subjected to a cross-examination by Eric if they attempted to do so or if they were determined to stay. Hannah Higgins had a particularly hard time and told me all about it. I was happy that I didn’t attend.
- Ann Noël in her diary, May 1985
April 6th, 2009
I saved the button.
But i don’t know how i got it. I certainly did not wait to leave at the end. Actually i don’t remember going in either.
Eric is a genius at making entertainment out of aggressivity. But i can relate to that. You should have been there when i messed up his performance at Barrytown. But ofcourse nothing was messed up at all. Nothing could have been (Eric’s genius) and so my interpolation was a plus. (Is that my genius?)