An oft-told story of a performance that Max Dean once staged in Montreal goes something like this: during the performance, unsuspecting audience members were confronted with someone being dragged into a room, rigged to a pulley system. Since it seemed the person would eventually end up hanging by his or her ankles, the audience frantically tried to prevent this by making all sorts of noise—someone even played the violin—until the threat of danger had passed (no one seems to know exactly when or how it ended). Like an urban myth, the story seemed more sketchy, more fantastical each time I heard it. Occasionally the performance was even attributed to another artist. Years later, as I am researching Dean’s work for this article, I feel compelled to set the record straight and ask him what really happened.
So begins our Spring 2001 cover story. To keep reading, view a PDF of the entire article.
