His lecture came a little after Nakadate's. He is much older than her, video and performance artist known with his characters Mike and Baby Ikki. Michael Smith does not look for collaborators to use in his work, instead he turns himself into a sadly funny character that the audience laughs at. His humor is a device to examine social norms, unification, archetypes (similar to the smiling facades I did in Fall 2010). Unlike Nakafdate the audience does not laugh at the helplessness of the collaborator but the helplessness of Smith's character. The question is who we laugh at: the artist, the character, ourselves reflected in his character? Also is it OK to laugh? Nakadate is easy to praise or condemn in what she does in her videos. However, by laughing at Mike or Baby Ikki its the audience stepping into the role of Nakadate dancing around the frustrated man.
Inevitably, one question from the public was how close is Mike to the real Michael Smith. He laughed and said they are actually close. I admire the brave act of using himself as the character to make fun of, which goes against the logic of aggressive individualism Nakadate goes for. What he does is something very difficult in the art market.
It was also interesting to see his newest work as artistic marketable product, installations and objects. I like his emphasis on TV and internet as devices for uniformity in people. It seems that self negating humor is Smiths aggression, like William Pop L and Oleg Kulik.
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