Lectures | Performances | Concerts | Radio Transmissions
CURATED BY RICARDO NICOLAU
From 08 to 12 March at 10pm
13 March at 5pm
FALKE PISANO / MARIANA SILVA / MICHELE DI MENNA / PIERRE LEGUILLON / VON CALHAU
The Cristina Guerra Gallery is presenting Perpetual Interview, a programme of performances, performance-conferences, readings,
concerts and radio broadcasts. As well as presenting the performing work of a series of international artists in Portugal for the first time,
the programme acknowledges the growing importance of voice in the so-called virtual arts, along with artists’ interest in exploring more
or less obsolete supports such as radio.
Voices everywhere! The ease with which, through using contemporary Technologies, we can today manage to record and reproduce
speeches, conferences, statements and interviews has led some people to state that we are nowadays living within a sort of “infinite
conference”. The fact is that artists are increasingly turning to language, particularly spoken and written language, which is often recorded.
One of the explanations for the recurring of discursive activity is the fact that they are interested in exploring mediums for transmitting
information that diverge from more and more standardised educational models – or in exploring and diffusing a type of knowledge that
cannot even be described as information. Some defend the spoken discourse, conversation as an artistic support that is as legitimate,
for example, as sculpture, painting film or video. It is not by chance that a great deal has been written of late about the “art of conversation”.
Perpetual Interview – a name requested as a loan from a project by the Portuguese artist Ana Jotta (Lisbon, 1946) in which she
interviews herself – is a programme of performance-conferences, readings, concerts and radio shows that acknowledges the increasing
interest shown by visual artists in language, in words, and in the voice – an interest often shown in works that explore the conference
format, convoke the theatre and explore the potential of the radio. From the 8th to the 13th of March, the Cristina Guerra Gallery (Lisbon)
is receiving a series of artists who have been exploring spoken and written language, and who will be presenting a series of eminently
performing projects over these six days in the gallery. The artists, in works ranging from public readings to conferences and to performances, including readings and concerts, use different linguistic strategies, confronting us with the capacity of sound and the
Word in order to produce space, shake the notion of the spectator, re-think the history of art – namely of modernism and abstraction
– and make concepts of information and knowledge vacillate.
It is a symptomatic fact that this project is being prolonged on the radio. Although these artists’ interest in radio is not a recent thing,
the works they have been making for this medium have never been particularly recognised within their respective careers. This situation
has been getting turned round, and there is an increasing number of artists using the radio’s potential through sound works, conference
or theatre readings and radio performances.
Rádio Zero (Lisbon), a partner in this initiative, will be broadcasting works specifically conceived by the artists for radio during the week
of the exhibition (between 12 noon and 1 pm) and on the last day, Saturday 13th, it will be broadcasting a concert/performance by
Von Calhau directly from the Cristina Guerra Gallery (from 5 pm onwards).
About the Artists:
Falke Pisano was born in Amsterdam in 1978. Of note among her recent exhibitions are: “Modern Modern” CAM: Chelsea Art Museum,
New York), “Modernologies” (MACBA, Barcelona) and “Making Worlds” (Venice Biennial) all from 2009. Among her most recent
conferences/performances are: “Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours” (5th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, 2008), “Evas Arche und der
Feminist” (Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, 2008), “A Sculpture turning into a Conversation” (Béton Salon, Paris, 2008) and
“Affecting Abstraction #3” (Lisson Gallery, London, 2007). Falke Pisano has been dealing with the legacy of modernism. Her research
into notions of modernism and on iconic or, to the contrary, almost unknown examples of modernist buildings and abstract sculptures
have often led to performance-conferences.
Mariana Silva was born in Lisbon in 1983. She lives and works in New York. Since 2004 she has participated in several group exhibitions,
namely “República ou o Teatro do Povo” (Arte Contempo, Lisbon, 2009),“BesRevelação 2008” (Serralves Museum, Oporto, 2008)
“Eurásia” (Anastácio Gonçalves Museum House, Lisbon, 2008), “Antes que a produção cesse” (Espaço Avenida, Lisbon, 2007), “Art
Meeting 2006” and “Rundgang” (Universität der Künste, Berlin, 2006 and 2007, respectively). In 2009, the o-declive collective, of
which she is a member, organised a cycle of exhibitions in Lisbon untitled Estados-Gerais, presenting, in three group exhibitions
(“República ou o Teatro do Povo”, works by several Portuguese and international artists. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the
iscp (International Studio & Curatorial Program), New York. Within the scope of this residence, Mariana Silva has set about researching
into particularly troublesome moments (which led to protests, stampings and riots) in the reactions by spectators in relation to determined
works (theatre, musicals) throughout the XX century, a study that has produced texts, reading and performance-conferences.
Michele di Menna was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1980. She lives and works in Frankfurt. Of note among her latest solo exhibitions
are: “SMS” (MARTa Herford, Herford, 2009), “Society for Actually Happening Art: A Rise and Fall Performed by Hands” (White Heat,
Stuttgart, 2009), “Where Everything is Crumbling” (Galerie Kamm, Berlin, 2008), “Because I Must”, Center, Berlin, 2008) and “These
Eels Are Electric” (Galerie Ritter & Staiff, Frankfurt, 2006). Among her latest group exhibitions are: “The Great Transformation, Art and Tactical Magic” (MARCO de Vigo and Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2008), “Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie” (Arnolfini, Bristol, 2009), “The
Perpetual Dialogue” (Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, 2009) and “At Home” (Die Fuge, Berlin, 2010). Her performances have been
presented in several different countries. Of note are: “A Rise and Fall performed By Hands” (Every Letter in the Alphabet, 2010) and
“Performed Rigorous Lines Framed in Cool-Toned Symmetry” (IMO, Copenhagen, 2009). Michele di Menna’s performing projects have
led her to be described as the “Yvonne Rainer for the Nu-Rave generation”, and her work as a perfect mixture between the Fluxus
movement and the film Flashdance.
Pierre Leguillon is a French artist and curator. Since the early nineties he has at the same time been an artist, curator and art critic.
He created the magazine Sommaire (35 issues between 1991 and 1996) and was a collaborator on the magazines Journal des Arts,
Art Press and Purple. He has also devoted himself to performance and to performance-conferences – for example, the slideshows in
which he shows images of exhibitions he has photographed over the years are very well known. Of note among his latest exhibitions
are: “Diane Arbus: a printed retrospective (1960-1971)”, presented at the Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), in 2008-09, where he presents
a very significant part (about 85%) of the pictures published in magazines by the photographer Diane Arbus – an important body of
work that was particularly neglected by the history of photography.
Von Calhau is the name of a duo of artists made up of Marta Ângela and João Alves. Their work, which is difficult to categorise, includes
religion, trance, psychedelics and rurality, and is made into 16mm film projections, performance and concerts. Since 2006 it has been
presented in places such as the Galeria ZDB (Lisbon, 2009) or the Uma Certa Falta de Coerência (Oporto, 2009). This duo, perhaps
because of their condition as a duo, presents on the Internet that which is, more than being a blog, is an artistic project in its own right
(www.eistenvoncalhau.com), and in which they have tried out exploring language games that might bear an idea of symmetry, such as
anagrams, palindromes and anacyclical lines.
Ricardo Nicolau
A Galeria Cristina Guerra apresenta Entrevista Perpétua, um programa de performances, conferências-performance, leituras, concertos e emissões radiofónicas. Este programa, ao mesmo tempo que apresenta pela primeira vez em Portugal o trabalho performativo de uma série de artistas internacionais, vem reconhecer a crescente importância da voz nas chamadas artes visuais, assim como o interesse dos artistas em explorar suportes mais ou menos obsoletos como a rádio. Vozes por todo o lado! A facilidade com que, através do recurso às tecnologias contemporâneas, conseguimos hoje gravar e disponibilizar discursos, conferências, declarações e entrevistas já levou alguém a afirmar que viveremos actualmente uma espécie de “conversa infinita”. O facto é que os artistas recorrem cada vez mais à linguagem, nomeadamente à palavra falada e escrita, frequentemente gravada. Uma das explicações para esta recorrência da actividade discursiva será o facto de estarem interessados em explorar meios de transmitir informação que divirjam de modelos educativos cada vez mais estandartizados – ou em explorar e difundir um tipo de conhecimento que nem sequer pode ser descrito como informação. Há quem defenda o discurso falado, a conversa enquanto um suporte artístico tão legítimo quanto, por exemplo, a escultura, a pintura, o filme ou o vídeo. Não é por acaso que muito se tem escrito, nos últimos tempos, sobre a “arte da conversa”.
Entrevista Perpétua – nome pedido de empréstimo a um projecto da artista portuguesa Ana Jotta (Lisboa, 1946) em que esta se auto-entrevista –, é um programa de conferências-performance, de leituras, de concertos e de peças radiofónicas que vem reconhecer
o interesse crescente dos artistas visuais pela linguagem, pela palavra, pela voz – interesse traduzido frequentemente em peças que exploram o formato conferência, convocam o teatro, exploram as potencialidades da rádio. Entre os dias 08 e 13 de Março, a Galeria Cristina Guerra (Lisboa) acolhe uma série de artistas que têm vindo a explorar a linguagem, falada e escrita, e que no espaço da galeria apresentam durante esses seis dias uma série de projectos eminentemente performativos. Em peças que vão de leituras públicas a conferências e a performances, passando por leituras e concertos, os artistas convidados recorrem a diferentes estratégias linguísticas, confrontando-nos com a capacidade do som e da palavra para produzir espaço, abalar a noção de espectador, repensar a história da arte – nomeadamente do modernismo e da abstracção –, fazer vacilar conceitos de informação e de conhecimento.
É sintomático que este projecto tenha um prolongamento na rádio. Embora o interesse dos artistas pela rádio não seja recente, as peças que foram realizando para este meio nunca foram particularmente reconhecidas dentro dos seus respectivos percursos. Esta situação tem vindo a inverter-se, e é cada vez maior o número de artistas a utilizarem o potencial daquele suporte através de peças sonoras, leituras de conferências ou de teatro, performances radiofónicas.
A Rádio Zero (Lisboa), parceira desta iniciativa, difunde ao longo da semana peças concebidas pelos artistas especificamente para a rádio (entre as 12h e as 13h) e no último dia, sábado 13, transmite em directo desde o espaço da Galeria Cristina Guerra um concerto/performance de Von Calhau (a partir das 17h).
Detailed Program - www.cristinaguerra.com
