MIAMI, FLORIDA.-«Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty,» a 60-minute live puppet rock opera, makes its world premiere during the international art show Art Basel Miami Beach (December 2–5, 2004). Devised by the conceptual artist Dan Graham, «Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» features video by artists Tony Oursler and Paul McCarthy, songs written and performed by Rodney Graham and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, and music performed live by the «Japanther» band. Master puppeteer Philip Huber has designed and constructed the puppets adapted from puppet drawings by Marie Paule McDonald. The live concerts will take place on December 1 from 8 to 9 p.m. (by invitation only) and daily from December 2 through 5 from 5 to 6 p.m. for the general public at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

«Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» charts the career of 24-year-old rock singer Neil Sky, who is elected President of the United States after instigating teenage riots to change the voting age to fourteen and putting LSD in the Congressional drinking water. But once President Sky retires the over-thirties population to LSD re-education camps, he faces his own unique demise. The opera’s tragi-comic narrative is the reductio ad absurdum of the hippies «general politics» as characterized by the 1960s youth slogan: «Don’t trust anyone over thirty.»

Devised by the conceptual artist Dan Graham, «Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» features video by artists Tony Oursler and Paul McCarthy, songs written and performed by Rodney Graham and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, and music performed live by «Japanther.» Philip Huber, the master puppeteer of the film «Being John Malkovich,» has designed and constructed the puppets adapted from puppet drawings by the artist Marie Paule McDonald.

Envisioned as a satiric history of the hippy generation and the end of the psychedelic era, «Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» is a narrative comprising a «schizophrenic» overlapping of textures, counterpoints, slogans, and clichés. The resulting overlay of opera, puppet theater, and video media is formulated as a sequence of «extensions,» a notion that Dan Graham has utilized to great effect throughout his body of work.

Continually splicing disparate media together (opera and rock, the proscenium and the television screen, the 1960s and the 2000s, real people and puppets, the living experience and the final book), «Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» deliberately separates the visual and dramatic elements, underlining how the narrative components overlap, while making the objects and subjects of time and culture interchangeable for both art and the audience. The effect is one of bitter reflection: we witness both our own shallow seduction by the cult of youth and the fascist tendencies that can overwhelm even the most idealistic movement if left unchecked.

«Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» was commissioned by TRANS> and is produced by Sandra Antelo-Suarez. The co-producers are Foundation 2021, New York, and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna / Wiener Festwochen. Additional funding for this project is provided by Art Basel Miami Beach, Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, The Rubell Hotels, and Avant Garde Multimedia.

«Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» makes its world premiere during Art Basel Miami Beach on December 1 from 8 to 9 p.m. (by invitation only) and daily from December 2 through 5 between 5 to 6 p.m. for the general public at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Drive, next to the Miami Beach Convention Center. Tickets for «Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty» must be reserved, as only limited seating is available.