Mike's World: Michael Smith & Joshua White

"Mike's World" takes a tightly focused view of a single Michael Smith performance persona, "Mike," as it has developed over the course of many years and through innumerable presentation formats. The character Mike functions metaphorically as a kind of ever-hopeful Candide, adrift in a world of rapid technological advances that he seems incapable of fully comprehending, and stymied by the depersonalization and isolation that have accompanied late twentieth-century life. Ironic in its sharp personification of failure, but also hilarious and poignant, Smith's work mirrors our most human concerns about competency and comfort. Underscoring the hybrid nature of Smith's art, the works reproduced in this colorful paperback book also highlight his last decade of video and installation collaborations with artist-director Joshua White. With contributions by Michael Smith, Jay Sanders, Mike Kelley, Ingrid Schaffner and Regine Basha.