Michael Smith

Michael Smith

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Biography: Michael Smith is a video, installation and performance artist who invokes the routines of popular comedy to articulate the banality and hype of mass consumer culture, and the isolation of those whose inner lives are defined by it. In a series of videotapes, performances and installations, which he has produced since the late 1970s, Smith chronicles the trivial dreams and adventures of his eponymous alter-ego, the bland, deadpan "Mike," a postmodern Everyman who believes everything and understands nothing in his media-saturated world.

Movies

Secret Horror
Secret Horror

Another regular evening at Mike's house turns into a comic nightmare. Finding himself a stranger in ...

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Go for It, Mike
Go for It, Mike

A parodic music video that re-envisions the Horatio Alger myth of the American Dream via 1950s-style...

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Down in the Rec Room
Down in the Rec Room

Mike ambles through his mundane activities to the accompaniment of TV theme songs and children's tun...

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Baby Ikki
Baby Ikki

This piece documents one of Smith's earliest performances of his "Baby Ikki" character, in which he ...

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It Starts at Home
It Starts at Home

It Starts at Home is a song-and-dance performance sitcom in which our hapless hero Mike encounters h...

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Doug and Mike's Adult Entertainment
Doug and Mike's Adult Entertainment

Performance artists Smith and Skinner use heavily coded comedic costumes and performance, including ...

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Famous Quotes From Art History
Famous Quotes From Art History

Produced by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Smith's short video parodies the sort of cultural and educ...

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MIKE
MIKE

Here, "another regular day" in the life of Mike reveals a world completely envisioned and experience...

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