Works of art art often, and increasingly, surrounded by a paratextual apparatus where the artists or institutions describe it. These presentations can, in the best of circumstances, stand in a dialogic relationship to the critical reception of the works. They can also, more problematically, direct the critical response in the cases where the critic does not have time or ability to provide a counter-reading – being, as they are, a sort of critical text in their own right. This limitation plays with the critic’s dialogue and dependency on the presentations by prohibiting the use of key words used in the description of Amanda Apetrea & Halla Ólafsdóttirs DEAD by Beauty and the Beast. The critical responses are thus to be written with the absence of the following words:
Alive
Anyone
Audience
Beauty
Between
Body
Burning
Consent
Dance
Darkness
Death
Dystopian
Expression
Fascination
Friendship
Fisting
Gender
Gravely
Happen
Heartbreaks
Horny
Inner
Love
Lyrical
Lust
Mountains
Music
Mythical
New
Outer
Performance
Poetic
Pornographic
Power
Reality
Remain
Shadow
Sex
Sexuality
Show
Story
Togetherness
Voice
War
