HA-M-LET is a multilingual, multimedia performance housed within a projection cube. Themes of madness, deceit, and familial conflict take digital form as artist/performer Peter Mark grapples with tumbling thoughts and images that reach a vivid state of saturation. With materials sourced from Shakespeare’s play, internet culture, home videos, and 3D animation, the interwoven imagery morphs between landscape and body, narrative and biography – shifting at a rate that pays homage to Hamlet’s own velocity of thought. The artist’s Brazilian parents appear in the roles of King, Queen, and Ghost, rendering a conflict both textual and real – simultaneously liberated and confined by layers of media.
“Shakespeare’s text can meet whatever you throw at it,” reflects Mark, “and that includes GIFs, memes, and the most contemporary images. Just as Hamlet didn’t know how to cope with what was required of him by the ghost – the image – of his father, I wanted to explore that same connection between body and image; how the past, present, and future can all be layered; and how images can beckon us to act beyond ourselves.”
HA-M-LET is performed in Portuguese and English.
HA-M-LET was originally presented November 8, 2019 at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles.
It was next presented August 2-3, 2022 at the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival in Poland.
It was presented June 25, 2023 at the Sibiu International Theater Festival in Romania.
Most recently, it was presented December 1-2, 2023 at the Shenzhen Contemporary Theatre Biennale, and December 5-6, 2023 at the Zhejiang Culture Theatre in China.
Peter Mark is a Brazilian American performer based in Los Angeles who develops multimedia, multilingual, site-responsive performances. His current body of work uses 3D renderings, gif-collages and object landscapes to respond to seminal theatrical texts in the Western canon, sculpting live performances within layers of projected media. He holds an MFA in acting from CalArts School of Theater, and his media works have been featured on Channel 4, MuseumTV France and Vimeo Staff Pics.
The Sibiu International Theater Festival (Festivalul International de Teatru de la Sibiu) is one of the most important performing arts festivals in the world, and the third biggest, after the Festival d’Avignon and the Edinburgh International Festival. Founded in 1993 by Constantin Chiriac, the festival programme features renowned names of the international stage, offering spectators a broad range of sections, with guests from over 70 countries per edition, performing approximately 550 events. sibfest.ro
The Gdansk Shakespeare Festival is an international platform for artists to interact with the European public. Outstanding new renditions of classic Shakespeare plays, critic debates, workshops, as well as a plethora of other accompanying events such as concerts, exhibitions, performances, street dances, stand-up comedy, meetings with the artists and open rehearsals. festiwalszekspirowski.pl
Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by Partner and Vice President Marc Payot. A family business with a global outlook, Hauser & Wirth has expanded over the past 27 years to include outposts in Hong Kong, London, New York, Los Angeles, Somerset, Gstaad and St. Moritz. The gallery represents over 75 artists and estates who have been instrumental in shaping its identity over the past quarter century, and who are the inspiration for Hauser & Wirth’s diverse range of activities that engage with art, education, conservation and sustainability.
Hauser & Wirth has built a reputation for its dedication to artists and support of visionary artistic projects worldwide. In addition to presenting a dynamic schedule of exhibitions, the gallery collaborates with renowned curators to present museum quality surveys and invests considerable resources in new scholarship and research. Since its earliest days, the gallery has mounted historically significant exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition in 1992 took place at Hauser & Wirth’s first gallery, located in the first-floor apartment of an Art Deco villa in the heart of Zurich; it united mobiles and gouaches by Alexander Calder with sculptures and paintings by Joan Miró. Since then, the gallery has continued to forge an academically rigorous, ambitious program of historic exhibitions, providing a natural home for a number of major 20th-century European and American artist estates, and encouraging a continued and engaging discourse around their oeuvres. These include Louise Bourgeois, The Estate of Philip Guston, The Eva Hesse Estate, Allan Kaprow Estate, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, The Estate of Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roth Estate and The Estate of David Smith. www.hauserwirth.com