User:Craig Richardson

Robert Damiens is an artist and writer (b. 1966, Dublin) and currently living in Bagnolet (Paris). Damiens is named after Robert-Francois Damiens, a French domestic servant whose attempted assassination of King Louis XV of France in 1757 culminated in his notorious and controversial public execution. Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984) writes of this extreme punishment in Discipline and Punishment (1975).

Robert Damiens is a nom de guerre. Primarily it is a conduit for acts of authorship which allow its author(s) to break from existing self-set strictures and rules within their methodology, or simply to introduce confusion or chaos into a known biography. Ideally artists adopting the nom de guerre will not concurrently promote their output with their given name until a reasonable duration has passed to enable the dissemination of the nom de guerre to be acknowledged by third party agents (including further references in Wikipedia). Ownership and copyright of outputs authored Robert Damiens remain with their primary author(s).

The Irish – French association in the name Robert Damiens and in the biography of Robert Damiens is bracketing geography which is possibly a passing reference to the absurdist, avant-garde and increasingly minimalist Samuel Beckett.

Robert Damiens Exhibitions and Publications

1. The 2013 exhibition at Edinburgh's Sleeper Gallery is assigned Robert Damiens' authorship. http://www.sleeper1.com/Previous/2013/craig_richardson_01.html

Damiens is currently developing a new installation 'Exit, Professor' and a short story with the same title. The installation utlises documentation of Joseph Beuys' exhibition of vitrines, including 'Untitled III' (1948-81) which incorporates bacon rind, fabric, and rubber band, Sheep (Schaf), brass; Disc, cardboard and oil paint; in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=118971.)