Mario Garcia Torres was last year’s winner of the Cartier Prize, and is in London to celebrate the Frieze project and the Cartier Award. His project was “a hybrid between a conference and a monologue, and the whole idea is to bring a specific story to the fair – which is a failed story of a film-maker.”
Torres wanted to turn the sad story into “something interesting and attractive – use the success context for the story.”
There’s a character called Alan Smithee, which is used when directors don’t want to associate their name with something. The character has therefore jumped from a failure story to being used in many unfinished film works.
Torres drew some inspiration from being in L.A. and also shaped the piece around the context of the Frieze art show; it may have turned out differently otherwise.
