I Like Dendermonde, Dendermonde Likes me

The director of SMAK Philippe Van Cauteren invited Emilio López-Menchero to do a performance at the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Solo Quint 3 organized by SMAK at Sint Blasius hospital and SMAK. The challenge was to question the intervention organized by the SMAK, a contemporary art museum, in Sint Blasius, a running hospital. The artist proposed to do a remake of the famous Beuys' performance “I like America and America likes me" (1974), but he asked Van Cauteran to embody Beuys and to the director of the hospital Mr Hugo Casteleyn to embody the coyote. Furthermore, in Dendermonde, there is the tradition of the “klaptanden” - which is a teeth slamming wolf - and it's a figure that comes to recall to the children that they should be wise, so the Mr. Casteleyn simultaneously turned to be the coyote and the local klaptanden. The video is a recording of the performance done on October 16th 2009 and it exists in a shorter and longer version.