Self help yourself against self sabbo tage

Abstract

Self Help Yourself Against SELF SABBO TAGE™ is an immersive journey, designed specifically for YOU (me) and your (my) personal SELF SABBO TAGE™! This research paper has been constructed as a satirical information package – one typically given out to participants attending self help and motivational speaking seminars – in order to present a direct textual engagement with the theoretical and material concerns informing my current studio practice. These concerns are fluid and include:

• the notions of success and failure and how they are linked to expectation • humour, particularly in the form of satire and self deprecation • the use of text in contemporary art • extensions of contemporary portraiture • ideas of setting and the stage

Within the context of this presentation I, myself, exist as guru Antom Pollins (a conflation of Tom Polo and Anthony Robbins, theworld’s most esteemed motivational speaker), a note-taking participant attending the seminar and thirdly, as a seminar Success Story – a decision reflecting the nature of contradiction and the multiple levels of anxiety threaded through my current practice.This decision also emphasises the self in self-help.

Congratulations on taking this bold step! We (I) hope you (I) are (am) ready to embrace the power that is Self Help Yourself Against SELF SABBO TAGE™!