De la performance à la microperformativité

With artistic proposals from
Yann Marussich
Gwendoline Robin & Vincent Martial
Virgile Novarina, Walid Breidi & LABOFACTORY

With contributions from
Lucie Strecker
Paul Vanouse
Marion Laval-Jeantet
Mariana Pérez Bobadilla
Irini Athanassakis
Bernard Andrieu
Chris Salter
Dominique Peysson

A curatorial proposal by Jens Hauser 

An event organized by École Polytechnique/Chaire Art-Science,
Le Générateur, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles and Association OU/VERT

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The concept of microperformativity denotes the current trend in performative art to destabilize the usually prominent place of the human scale. It interrogates the microscopic world and its biological and technological agents as new actors in art. 

At a time when performance is taking on an increasingly important role in art, these contemporary experiments in microperformativity redefine what art, philosophy and the techno-sciences consider a ‘body’ today, by inviting new actors: genetic sequences, cellular mechanisms, bacteria, fungi, enzymes and other proteins, ‘vibrating matter’ from physics, but also high-frequency trading algorithms or the deep learning networks of artificial intelligence. 

The concept of “microperformativity” underscores and contextualizes the recent focus on non-human agentivities, both biological and technical. As such, the term challenges and reverses the mesoscopic tradition in which human phenomenological considerations are still rooted. At a time when performance art -that which primarily concerns the human body-is evolving towards a performativity in art generalized, artists are redefining what is considered a body today, by shifting the focus from actions mesoscopic to microscopic functions from physical gestures to physiological processes, as well as from staged diegetic time (theater time) to the real performative time of an experience.

” Bacteria perform processes. Scientists perform experiments. Algorithms perform actions. Humans perform gender and sex. The question is, who or what doesn’t perform these days ?” thus asks theorist Chris Salter.

Given the contemporary artistic interest in scientific research, for example on the microbiome or synthetic biology, here fragments of genes, cells, proteins, enzymes, bacteria or viruses play a proxy role, while the sociology of science analyzes experimental systems, while questioning the scale of human action as the sole point of reference. Such techno-science-inspired artistic practices seek to stimulate awareness ranging from the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensible complexity of the macroscopic, proposing procedural artworks in mesoscopic compression that demand, nonetheless, a rethinking of our perceptive, human-too human habits.

This festival is organized in conjunction with the publication “On Microperformativity” (French premiere), edited by Jens Hauser & Lucie Strecker :
https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/
The publication will be on sale on site for €20

Photo © Emilie Salquèbre – Festival Souterrain

Thursday, April 13: Participatory demonstrations and workshops

From 9.30 to 17.30 > CNRS-École Polytechnique, Laboratoire d’Hydrodynamique (LadHyX)
91128 Palaiseau

 

Number of participants limited to 20, registration by email to maxime.lafforgue@legenerateur.com until 04/11/2023:
Please mention your name, profession/affiliation, and 1-2 sentence/s about your motivation.

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From 19.00 to 21.00 > Le Générateur
94250 Gentilly  

Around Microexplosive road, performative installation by Gwendoline Robin and Vincent Martial

Microexplosive road is the working title of a collaborative exploration between Gwendoline Robin and Vincent Martial – both performance artists whose plastic practice on the one hand, sound on the other, reveals itself in the intrinsic blending of these two fields. Through the microscopic exploration of matter in transformation, they stage amplified processes of metamorphosis to create a performative universe. From explosive materials, dry ice and candles, microphenomena emerge in space-time that tests the audience’s sensitivity.

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Production: Sonambule et asbl S.T. 10-13  coproduction: Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, La Muse en circuit, Matrice ; Support : Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Lisboa Soa

20.00-21.00 / Regards croisés : Table Ronde with Virgile Novarina & Vincent Martial, moderated by Jens Hauser

Friday April 14: Colloquium and performative actions

From 13.00 to 22.00 > Le Générateur
94250 Gentilly

Symposium in French and English, without simultaneous translation

Quantum dream – the day I imagined the ocean / Installation – performance
Virgile Novarina, Walid Breidi and LABOFACTORY (Jean-Marc Chomaz & Laurent Karst)

When we sleep, our brains go through different creative states, we see shapes and colors in the dark and hear sounds in the silence. So there’s a real gap between a sleeper’s inert appearance and the richness of their inner experience. The Quantum Dream installation offers visitors a sensory and poetic re-reading of this paradox. In the half-light, a sleeper equipped with sensors seems to interact with a mysterious object, a circular transparent tank containing a miniature ocean, seemingly inert – dormant water – but whose inner movements are revealed on the floor by a play of light and shadow. Volutes, currents, waves and eddies, invisible to the naked eye, appear on the ground, translating in real time the invisible activity of the sleeping brain. In this miniature ocean, layers of water of different densities are separated by natural interfaces, which when agitated give rise to phenomena revealed on the ground by an ombroscopic process.

With the participation of Didier Bouchon, Antoine Garcia & Giancarlo Rizza, with the support of the Arts and Sciences Chair at Ecole Polytechnique, ENSAD-PSL and the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation.

14.00 Symposium ‘De la microperformativité’ / ‘On microperformativity’

14.00 – Jens Hauser (FR):
Microperformativity and Biomediality – A Genealogy of Terms

14.30 – Lucie Strecker (EN):
A Close Reading of Microperformativity: Artistic Applications & Implications 

15.00 – Paul Vanouse (EN):
Labor: The post-anthropocentric body ‘at work’

15.30 – Marion Laval-Jeantet (FR):
Art and the microbiome: New sites of microperformativity in Object-Oriented Art

16.30 – Mariana Pérez Bobadilla (EN):
Microorganisms on Stage: Winogradsky columns as performative displays in art and science

17.00 – Irini Athanassakis (FR):
STILLLEBEN with symbiotes

17.30 – Bernard Andrieu (FR):
Emerging microperformativity : A propos de la médiation physiologique dans les performances ‘immobiles’ de Yann Marussich

18.00 – Chris Salter (EN): 
Epistemes of Performativity

18.30 – Dominique Peysson (FR):
Man-and-woman-on-a-chip. Micro-performances at different scales

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20.00 – Broken Bath / Performance
Yann Marussich

In Broken Bath, Yann Marussich is crushed by the excessive weight of broken glass in a bathtub; only his forearm is visible on the surface of the sharp, crystalline magma. At the risk of his body being cut, wounded and suffocated, the artist tries to extricate himself with an almost motionless slowness, panting for the breath of resurrection. “Immersion here is by osmosis, making the body a piece of the glass that surrounds it. […] This ‘slow-art’ is used as a deepening of awareness and as a very attentive awakening to the pressure of the otherwise sharp broken glass. It takes mental preparation and time to slow the heart rate, activate one’s energy ‘shields’, just as qigong teaches respiratory and circulatory work to tame pain, and think of nothing.” (Bernard Andrieu) Micro performativity helps people experience the emptiness of thought: “Doing nothing! The paradox of meditation is that you learn to let go of your thoughts. As soon as you hold on to a thought, you feel its pain.” (Yann Marussich)