A HISTORY OF PERFORMANCE IN 20 MINUTES
Guillaume Désanges
30 November 2013

 

Lecture performance as part of the exhibition "Impossible Show"

"Let’s attempt a history of the body in art as a history of silence as opposed to discourse about art. Let’s simply show how the history - of art - has, at a certain moment - and for some people - engendered gestures and not objects. And certainly not discourse... Looked at this way, in a purely formal fashion, the history of performance, or of body art, is not then a history of the representation of the body but exclusively a history of gesture. Barely sketched, already expired." (Guillaume Désanges).

"A history of performance in 20 minutes" is a conference which aims at dividing the history of performance in 10 gestures: 1 - Appearing, 2 - Receiving, 3 - Holding back, 4 - Escaping, 5 - Aiming, 6 - Falling, 7 - Crying, 8 - Biting, 9 - Emptying oneself, 10 - Disappearing, discussing very subjectively those 10 gestures.

Guillaume Désanges is a free-lance curator and art critic, founder and director of "Work Method", a Paris based agency for artistic projects. He organizes international exhibitions projects and lectures.


Images

Guillaume Désanges: A history of performance in 20 minutes, 2013
Photo: Hartwig Schwarz