It's Not What the World Needs Right Now

Director: Andrew Norman Wilson

2024 / 70min

For one night only, Andrew Norman Wilson joins Metrograph for a live performance of his recent essay for The Baffler, “It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now."

The Baffler is pleased to present a live performance by Andrew Norman Wilson. In the 2010s, Andrew Norman Wilson had seen his art go viral a few times, and landed four biennials—the start of a promising career. In “It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now,” his recent essay for issue 73 of The Baffler, Wilson asks what precisely that looks like in an industry that pays in clout and almost never in cash. In a performance that features new images, videos, and passages that paint a stark portrait, replete with a rib removal and an episode of penguin-induced dissociation, Wilson insightfully and often hilariously explores his departure from a contemporary art world whose works serve no one but yacht owners and curatorial bureaucrats with terminal degrees.