The Art Newspaper

Beat-boxing about Burton at MoMA

By The Art Newspaper. From In The Frame
Published online: 15 March 2010

MoMA’s PopRally events, a grab-bag series mixing comedy, music, film and art, are some of the most entertaining programmes organised by the august institution, and Sunday night’s “Burtonalia” show was no exception. Inspired by the current exhibition of drawings, paintings and sculptures by the darkly comic filmmaker Tim Burton, the evening featured a spontaneous collection of performances, including comedians doing shtick based on the spooky director’s oeuvre and a five-piece band improvising suitably cacophonic compositions to accompany a slideshow of his drawings. One of the highlights was seeing a pair of Super 8 films produced by and starring a teenaged Tim, which revealed the precocious talent of the Alice in Wonderland director before he had recourse to CGI. But the real show stopper was the always phenomenal beat-boxer and absurdist comedian Reggie Watts, who creates densely layered tracks live on stage using just a pocket-sized loop machine and exhorted MoMA to keep finding the budget for such events in the future.