The
III VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK will take place at
European Cultural Centre | Palazzo Mora and Palazzo Michiel in Venice,
December 10-17, 2016 under the focus Fragile Body – Material Body. It concludes the trilogy project following the first two editions Hybrid Body – Poetic Body and Ritual Body – Political Body that took place in December 2012 (Palazzo Bembo), and in December 2014 (Palazzo Mora and Palazzo Michiel).
The live art exhibition project dedicated to contemporary performance art showcases in its third edition works of over 80 international performance artists from around the globe, some of which are presented in cooperation with prestigious cultural institutions and foundations. Pioneers of this art discipline exhibit and perform alongside established and emerging artists, reflecting influences and current tendencies in the field.
The project consists of an exhibition of performance installations, photographic and video documentation as well as vibrant program of live performances, talks, screenings and meetings with the participating artists, researchers and curators.
For this third edition with the focus Fragile Body – Material Body, the works present physical, mental and spiritual bodies as primary material of artistic expression, aiming to investigate a wide range of concepts pertinent to the art forms of performance art, Live art and Body Art, such as: authenticity, living entities and their relations towards one another; fragility and vulnerability of the individual and of the social relationships; mental and spiritual states rendered through liminal physical and corporeal manifestation; as well as encouraging questions around the post-organic transformations and mutations to which we subject the human body.
The presence of human beings in this world is always more than a temporary condition: the communication that can be triggered between artists and the audience is an essential element. The topics addressed during the week will relate to the need to look at social relations and the lives of individuals with greater care.
Due to the specificity of this edition's theme Fragile Body – Material Body, the live performances and works on display will also seek to provide reflection and further considerations on how to find meaningful mechanisms to foster positive change through contemporary culture and art in a vital way.
The live art exhibition project dedicated to contemporary performance art showcases in its third edition works of over 80 international performance artists from around the globe, some of which are presented in cooperation with prestigious cultural institutions and foundations. Pioneers of this art discipline exhibit and perform alongside established and emerging artists, reflecting influences and current tendencies in the field.
The project consists of an exhibition of performance installations, photographic and video documentation as well as vibrant program of live performances, talks, screenings and meetings with the participating artists, researchers and curators.
For this third edition with the focus Fragile Body – Material Body, the works present physical, mental and spiritual bodies as primary material of artistic expression, aiming to investigate a wide range of concepts pertinent to the art forms of performance art, Live art and Body Art, such as: authenticity, living entities and their relations towards one another; fragility and vulnerability of the individual and of the social relationships; mental and spiritual states rendered through liminal physical and corporeal manifestation; as well as encouraging questions around the post-organic transformations and mutations to which we subject the human body.
The presence of human beings in this world is always more than a temporary condition: the communication that can be triggered between artists and the audience is an essential element. The topics addressed during the week will relate to the need to look at social relations and the lives of individuals with greater care.
Due to the specificity of this edition's theme Fragile Body – Material Body, the live performances and works on display will also seek to provide reflection and further considerations on how to find meaningful mechanisms to foster positive change through contemporary culture and art in a vital way.
The ART WEEK BLOG will be updated daily during the week with reflections, features and interviews by our residence writers.
FRA•GILE
The word "fragile" is often associated with the locution "handle with care": this is
precisely where the III VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK heads, this
time around, raising awareness on the precariousness of life through
performance art. It is a
call to action – to practice a more mindful, careful and respectful behaviour
towards the Other, in the words we say, thoughts we think, and things we do. Toying
with the paradox of the strength and fragility of our physical bodies, the
first requirement here is to step beyond mere appearances and limitations.
Fragility
does not only imply negative connotations – it is rather a continuous memento
mori for its existence in thoughts, convictions, systems, beliefs, and a
reminder to live with full awareness of the complex ephemerality of our times,
taking care of all that surrounds us, near and far.
Through
the physical body (the primary medium of the practice of performance art),
human relationships and their inherent frailty are considered. With
frailty comes the potential for destruction and with destruction comes the
potential for growth: of the individual, social, political, spiritual and
ethical systems.
Proposing
de-construction
as a necessary tool for development, the word "care" implies
real engagement in dealing with an emergency, or to possibly evaluate a
given
situation from all sides, therefore also reflecting on its potentials
and
value. Eventually, depending on the conclusions of these evaluations, to
"handle with care" can either mean to protect that which is fragile or
to
courageously engage in transformation, to the point that the only way
"to deal
with a world so evidently and increasingly unfree, it is to become so
absolutely free that our very existence is an act of rebellion... for
rebellion
cannot exist without a strange form of love." (Albert Camus)
MA•TE•RIAL
The
Thesaurus defines the term "material" as an alternative adjective for the body of
a human being, and many historical references in literature indicate the
material body as the door to reach the spiritual body, that which has to be transcended
in one way or another to reach our spiritual matter.
Reflecting
upon the perception of our material bodies to understand and eventually
reinforce the spiritual one, is a central question in Oriental religions as
well as in the Holy Thursday, when in the garden of Gethsemane, finding his
disciples in sleep, Jesus rouses them and warns them by saying: "The spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26:41).
Regardless
of the Christian connotation, this sentence is relevant because it states that
if the flesh is weak (pars constituent of our material body, which is fragile
and destined unavoidably to caducity), the spirit is "willing" (in Greek
πρόθυμον = prothemon), desirous to do what is right – that 'right' that we
feel, perceive, is also necessary for an ethical formation, as Kant argued in
The Critique of Practical Reason (1788).
Influential
philosophical investigations (by Aristotle, Hegel, Jung, Watts, to cite a
few) that have inquired into the nature of being focusing on the phenomenology
of the spirit, up to the latest holistic perspectives and neuroscience
researches, seem to agree on the fact that the parts of something are
intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole, and
that it is our material body that tells us (of the need) to nurture our spirit
and tune in to its true desires.
In other
words, it is like saying that if the spirit tends towards that which is good,
true, complete, beautiful, and attainable because of our material body, the continuous
metamorphoses that the material body undergoes throughout life (because of its
inevitable organic decay, which still lasts long after death), might be even
interpreted as evidence of a transcendence from all that is material, and proof
of the life-giving shape of the being (itself).
All
this
can be certainly refutable. Every proposition has its Achilles' heel
because "all the propositions say the same thing, to wit nothing"
(Ludwig
Wittgenstein): the language only comes up to where it can get for "the
limits
of our language mean the limits of our world." (LW)
What
does it mean for a being to be? What is existence? What can be said to exist?
Everything
we see could also be otherwise. Everything we can describe at all,
could also be otherwise. Perhaps we humans are just a cosmic accident
with a very short life span and the world we live in is "all that is the
case. This is how things stand." (LW)
Perhaps
to act and give essence to what cannot be said, accepting, taking, contrasting,
enduring, forsaking, forgiving, passing over or through – with dignified
silence – what we cannot speak about but we're aware of, and with it all that
is elusive and illusory.
Artists,
everyday people – because it makes no difference and there is no diversity – we appear just for what we actually are.
We all
mirror each other carrying within us our own ideals, ideas, sufferings, loves,
fears, dreams, sensualities and ironies as pure treasures to express and share,
shaping together a time-based social sculpture: a creative temporary community
which reflects freedom and respects it.
Perhaps to celebrate life.
KYRAHM + JULIUS KAISER (Italy)
Live performances ECCE (H)OMO, Guerrieri (2016) and Human Installation I: Gender Obsolenscence (2010).
On exhibit the performance film (A)mare Conchiglie (2015); in presentation the short film by Claudio del Signore Drag king, Julia's Dream(2015); documentary Oltre il corpo (2016), featuring VestAndPage, Fioramanti, Kyrahm, Gonzalo Rabanal, Collettivo Cercle and Ron Athey.
Kyrahm + Julius Kaiser, Human Installation I: Gender Obscolescence (2008). Courtesy the artists.
Kyrahm + Julius Kaiser
is an
Italian artist couple based in Rome, with individual expertise in the
fields of visual and performance
art, video art, film and LGTB activism. Upon their encounter, they
started the project Human Installations, a research comprising
contemporary art, live art and avant-garde theatre. In a constant
dialogue with cinema, they create works of video art, documentaries and
films. Their interest lies on the social
function of the artist, existential dynamics, the role of identity, and
the experimentation along mental and
physical limits and gender roles.
At the VENICE INTERNATIONAL
PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, they present two live performances:
ECCE (H)OMO, Guerrieri (2016):
"With humbleness I joined these people to expose their bodies and
souls, voluntarily presenting themselves and their lived lives. A mother
without the right on her baby girl, a woman loving her girlfriend, the
courage of the disabled and the pride of age and illness." Every
intervention is inspired by a piece of video art in progress: stations
of actions on human fragility that involve public performances, as well
as intimate moments of the everyday. Written and directed by Kyrahm.
Human Installation I: Gender Obsolenscence (2010):
The biological sex as skin. Gender as the sense of being. Path,
crossing and transition. Every naked body a story. Distress is tiring,
and the flesh is material to be shaped. The rite of dressing up as a
turning backwards: the self is revealed. Written and directed by Kyrahm + Julius Kaiser.
Further Kyrahm and Julius Kaiser present on exhibit the performance film (A)mare Conchiglie (2015) and in presentation the short film by Claudio del Signore Drag king, Julia's Dream (2015) as well as the documentary Oltre il corpo (2016), featuring VestAndPage, Fioramanti, Kyrahm, Gonzalo Rabanal, Collettivo Cercle and Ron Athey.
+ LIVE PERFORMANCE
