DETTO TRA NOI 1
DETTO TRA NOI 2
Bruce Nauman’s No, No, New Museum forms part of a series of four videos called Clown Torture. In it, the American actor Walter Stevens performs absurd scenarios dressed as a clown. The video elicits unease and disturbs the viewer despite including nothing shocking. Nauman works with very simple elements, but combined and repeated infinitely they become worrying. The clown, associated with the circus and parties but also horror films such as ‘It, repeats countless times the word ‘no’, which we use repeatedly each day. This monotonous complaint ‘no, no, no’ fixes itself in our minds like a torture. The video plays on a loop, so restarts automatically when it ends, giving the impression that this act continues eternally.