2017 Catalogue Archive

Taken from the karaoke performances British artist Phil Collins filmed for his project The World Won’t Listen, this photograph shows three young Indonesian singers in front of kitsch backdrops excitedly performing songs by the 1980s British indie-rock band The Smiths. For his 2007 video trilogy, Collins traveled to Bogotá, Colombia; Istanbul, Turkey; and Jakarta, Indonesia to host karaoke nights of The Smiths’ 1987 album The World Won’t Listen, which he advertised to local fans using street posters in the native language of each country (the name of this piece translates as “The World Won’t Listen” in Indonesian). Here, three images taken from the performance in Jakarta are presented in a format similar to the three-screen installation on view at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of their current exhibition Truth: 24 frames per second. Phil Collins’ photographs and videos have been a part of numerous solo and group exhibitions and his work resides in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum; Tate Gallery, London; MoMA; and the Dallas Museum of Art.