Born in Queens and raised on the south shore of Long Island, it was apparent that after witnessing the National Guard drag my sister and her friends by the hair that this wasn’t the Hamptons. I went West and got my degrees in Kansas City and Los Angeles. It was on the 101 Hwy going North on foot and carrying a car size tumble weed between rush hour traffic when it hit me, ”get out of here and go to Europe”. And after having done several “Live-Site” installations at The Kitchen in NYC where I was more a “navigator” than a performer using “garage technologies” to promote a rather unstable set of visual/physical circumstances, I was in Vienna where a complete new body of work ensued called “StandBys”. A StandBy is a reaction where I insert myself into an artwork, exhibition or public context. StandBys are never sponsored and are always executed without sanction where almost a single image serves as proof of execution. From 2000 to 2007 I traveled through out Europe doing StandBys at every port of call until June of 2007 when I inadvertently insulted an architect while doing a StandBy in Bratislava that started my latest series, “Floor Plans for Dirty Words”. I am currently in NYC where the Austrian Cultural Forum has agreed to sponsor in part a group show I curated and premiered in Vienna entitled, “Through the Night Softly and how to avoid these recurring tripwires”.
L: ""Rush hour", Film still. Ramzy Telly, M: Predator", photo: Dennis Balk, R: StandBy Sebastion, photo, Pete Gamachl.