“You piss in the wind and 15 years later, it comes back and hits you in the face" - Zou Zou speaking about this work in 1999.
In 1993 Dower found a set of videotapes on an Amsterdam market from a 1985 performance by the cabaret clown Zou Zou. Much of performance referred to
socio-political issues of the time, like the nuclear arms race and space travel. On one point, Zou Zou acts out a mime, describing a three dimensional space through a
set of actions. Dower studied the mime and reconstructed its ergonomic space as a sculpture. A video monitor playing the mime is incorporated into the sculpture
in a location, uncannily anticipated in the original mime. In trying to 'read' the mime and sculpture, the viewer is taken on a mirrored journey in the virtual or
imagined space of their own mind. The effect is paradoxical.
‘Zou Zou’s Mime Reconstructed’ was first exhibited in Amsterdam in 1993 and Dower spent several years actively trying to trace Zou Zou, whilst continuing to exhibit
the work around Europe. In 1999 the film was projected on a large scale onto the side of London's Southbank Centre, accompanied by an appeal. Zou Zou was
eventually discovered through his participation in a German theatre festival and he was traced to Amsterdam. It turned out that he was from the US and had studied at
clown school in Paris. It also transpired that Zou Zou had been going out with an artist friend of Dower's (Yvonne Dröge Wendel) who occupied a studio in the same
building as Dower, where the work was made and exhibited in 1993.
Zou Zou finally saw the reconstruction of his mime in 1999 at an exhibition at Lokaal 01 in Antwerp. He brought along the guitarist from the performance and loaned
one of the original props to the exhibition (a suitcase with pop-up Nuclear power station). Upon seeing his mime translated into 3 dimensions, Zou Zou exclaimed: “You
piss in the wind and 15 years later, it comes back and hits you in the face". Dower also impersonated Zou Zou in a series of photographs in 1993, which were shown at the
Musee des beaux Arts, Dunkirque in the exhibition Les Merveilles du Monde in 2006. During the exhibition, Dower dressed up as Zou Zou and went sightseeing around
the town of Dunkirque.
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