About Larry Litt and The Blame Show

Democracy activist and political humorist Larry Litt has uniquely traveled the roads between art, journalism and filmmaking since 1974. His incursions into art began with the renowned 1972 Flag Show in Greenwich Village's Judson Church with his American Tap Water Conspiracy sculpture, then on to creating works about cultural censorship and media democracy which were shown in New York galleries.

Heading to Miami in 1976 he worked in both commercial and public radio. As an on air public radio broadcaster in Miami he added wit and irony to his news shows. Returning to New York in 1989 he covered the first Gulf War for a New York newsweekly, and has since traveled extensively writing about food and politics for l mainstream newspapers and magazines.

Litt has performed his own work at major arts festivals in the Czech Republic, Korea, Taiwan, Greece, Japan, and at major arts spaces in America. With a band of Korean musicians he performed his oratorio titled, Video Mudang : Shamanism/Shamanisn't, an homage to Nam June Paik, at the award winning German Pavilion on opening day of the1993 Venice Biennale. His scripts are translated into German, Japanese, and Korean.

Soon after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and an ensuing month of incessant broadcast media bombardment by redundant talking heads, Litt decided it was necessary to record his friends opinions about those events and their political, personal, and social aftermath. Without stating for what in particular they asked the question, "Who's to blame?"

These edited tapings became the first Blame Show video, subtitled “Dissent=Freedom.” Recorded mainly in Chelsea New York's White Box alternative arts space from November 2001 to January 2002, it features over ninety people voicing their honest, emotional views without predetermined government, corporate or network agendas. Opening May 1, 2002, this video has traveled to dozens of museums, galleries, colleges and universities since.

Later in 2002, at the height of the corporate corruption scandals, the Queens Museum of Art commissioned a second Blame Show style video. Litt interviewed museum visitors, as diverse a group of internationals as can be found anywhere. This edition of The Blame Show focuses on distrust and disgust with Big Business and US Government's secretive and misleading nature in both politics, media, censorship and the securities markets. It is a documentation of the effects of high finance and deregulation on the average working man as well as the ever increasing paranoia of immigrants following the Patriot Act's passage.

The most recent Blame Show, “Before You Don't Vote...Advice to the Angry, Apathetic and Alienated” was commissioned by the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art. It was inspired by a published report titled, The Vanishing Voter. This book states that people who talk about politics are more likely to vote and participate in politics than those who just absorb and often avoid political information through mainstream media. Litt filmed over fifty Americans from Palm Beach and New York, people who continue their political participation despite anti-democratic experieinces. “I asked each of them to give advice to those people who don't participate. Every time this video screens, it stimulates intense dialogues afterwards about politics and current affairs,” states Litt.