7–9 November 2014
Preview and opening: 6 November
ARTISSIMA
Oval, Lingotto Fiere
Turin
Italy
Per4m is thenew section debuting at the 21st edition of Artissima dedicated to performance art in a highly innovative way. Rather than including it as a fringe event, Artissima will present a fully fledged section of the fair, with works by 16 artists represented by 16 participating galleries and selected by three international curators: Simone Menegoi (independent curator, Milan), Tobi Maier (critic and independent curator, São Paulo)and Natalia Sielewicz (curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw).
Consistent with Artissima’s identity as a laboratory for cutting-edge contemporary art, Per4m views performance art as a form of expression which deserves the same attention as other artistic media. The 16 works presented during the four days of the event will be set up on a special platform and in shared areas of the fair, allowing the performers to interact with the public.
Performance pieces
– Leah Capaldi, Vitrine Gallery, London
Allure, 2011–14
After having sprayed an entire bottle of Allure by Chanel on themselves, Leah Capaldi’s male and female performers will disperse throughout the fair, invading the space with their invisible but imposing fragrance.
– Marcello Maloberti, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan
AMEN – Il boschetto dei giovani artisti, 2014
Several young Italian artists promenade through the fair carrying table sculptures created by the artist, each bearing a dwarf cypress tree in a vase. From time to time the young performers arrange the tables and flowers on the floor and sit around them to create a tableau vivant.
– Helena Hladilová, CO2, Turin
Swinger, 2014
A large Plasticine sculpture, Swinger consists of a head that the artist has left in a rough state. Through the intervention of the spectators, who are invited to leave their mark by shaping the Plasticine to their liking, the head assumes a definitive shape as the result of collective action.
– Kate Steciw & Rachel de Joode, Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin
Open for Business, 2012–ongoing
Open for Business involves an exchange of images and influences often originating from the web. The Per4m stage will be transformed into a studio, in which the images will be configured in a variety of ways, from photography to sculpture.
– Nico Vascellari, Monitor, Rome
Coperta d’ombra, 2014
Nico Vascellari will present the first ever performance of his new production, inspired by a scene from the film Nostalghia (1983), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The artist will create an action around the famous monologue by Domenico, a mentally ill character who climbs on the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Piazza del Campidoglio in Roma, delivering an articulated speech on the relationship between mental illness and presumed sanity.
– Giovanni Morbin, Artericambi, Verona
Strappo alla regola, 2014
Giovanni Morbin will be positioned incognito at the entrance to Artissima, carrying out a discrete activity throughout the opening times of the fair, possibly unobserved by the distracted spectators. The prize, for those who recognise him, will be a unique work on paper by the artist.
– Tobias Kaspar, Peter Kilchmann, Zurich
Friends, Lovers and Financiers, 2014
For Per4m, Tobias Kaspar has developed a new collection and catwalk performance project titled Friends, Lovers and Financiers, consisting of items of clothing donated by friends, artists, curators and collectors invited to give a garment from their wardrobes. The original label will be replaced by a new brand specially designed by the artist.
– Prinz Gholam, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
Ein Ding Mehr, 2006–14
Prinz Gholam will present Ein Ding Mehr (a project created in 2006 which remains in constant evolution) in which the two artists assume poses taken from paintings, sculptures, films and dance routines from the past, focussing attention on the language of the body—between spontaneous gesture and emulation.
– Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet, Marcelle Alix, Paris
Nautilus, 2013
Based on the spoken word, the lesson–performance by Hervé and Maillet starts from a found ammonite, a fossilised shell, before launching into a digression of an anecdotal and personal nature, with the blend of “high” and “low” that has come to characterise the style of the duo.
– Cally Spooner, MOTInternational, London, Brussels
Seven-Thirty till Nine, 2014
Visitors to the fair will be invited to attend a performance by a pianist–singer playing a repertoire of well-known pop songs. But the familiar atmosphere transforms into a feeling of strangeness through the lyrics, which have been rewritten by the artist in order to draw attention to themes such as loneliness or alienation at work.
– f.marquespenteado, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Three novels, 2014
In Three novels f.marquespenteado narrates the tales of three characters and acts out the role of their lover. The dense web of stories is accompanied by the presence of beloved objects and personal effects which are assigned an important evocative function.
– Italo Zuffi, Pinksummer, Genova
Dispersione, 2014
The artist will transform the performance space into a welcoming area for the public with a few objects on display while a real action takes place elsewhere. Suddenly, an event will link the space experienced directly and that experienced distantly, thereby ending the performance.
– Viola Yeşiltaç in collaboration with Oliver Input, David Lewis Gallery, New York
Habite de Tabletier, 2014
The performance combines music samples with different textual sources: from personal memories to quotes from the historical chess match between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Mechanical Turk, or extracts from the diary of the English composer Clive Wearing. The act of “remixing” the fragmentary information produces combinations loaded with new meanings.
– Tom Johnson, Guido Costa Projects, Turin
White-Toothed Ambition: An Invitation to an Empire State, 2014
Using objects and technological media, Tom Johnson will present a performance that reworks three of his previous monologues, alternating between English and Italian: La lingua è un gancio, White-Toothed Ambition and An Invitation to an Empire State. The obsessive variations alternated with improvised digressions create ironic associations.
– Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna
Interpretation, 2010–14
Sun Ra, the celebrated jazz musician and poet committed to the defence of civil rights for African Americans, is the figure at the centre of Interpretation. Sun Ra’s charisma and extravagant personal mythology are reflected in the complexity of the action, which intertwines the practice of drawing and writing with the performance of actress Mary Knox with an organ accompaniment by Hendrik Hegray and a DJ set by the artist herself.
– Shaun Gladwell, Galleria Enrico Astuni, Bologna
Reversed Readymade, 2014
Shaun Gladwell has invited champion BMX freestyler Matti Hemmings to demonstrate his skills using a copy of Bicycle Wheel, the famous readymade created by Marcel Duchamp in 1913, as if it were a unicycle. The work literally and metaphorically reverses Duchamp’s conceptual act: by simply adding two pedals, the legendary Bicycle Wheel suddenly finds its value in common usage—and in a highly spectacular manner.
Prix K-Way Per4m
A new and important prize is making its debut along with Per4m: the 10,000 euro Prix K-Way Per4m will be destined for the most relevant and significant of the performance pieces presented at the fair and awarded by a jury of international experts composed of Silvia Fanti (Performance Arts Curator, Xing, Bologna), Agustin Pérez Rubio (Artistic Director, Malba – Fundación Costantin, Buenos Aires) and Stephanie Rosenthal (Head Curator, Hayward Gallery, London, and Artistic Director, Sydney Biennale 2016).
Artissima, a brand name by Regione Piemonte, Provincia di Torino and Città di Torino, is promoted by Fondazione Torino Musei. With the support of the three brand-owning authorities, together with Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, Compagnia di San Paolo and Camera di commercio di Torino.
Event collaborators:
Main partner: UniCredit
Partner: illycaffè, K-Way, Lancia, Lauretana, Nital
In-kind sponsors: Artsy, CarloAngela, Centrale del latte di Torino, GL Events Italia – Lingotto Fiere, Le Fablier, Odilla Chocolat, Sagat, Tisettanta
Official carrier: Gondrand
Media partner: La Stampa, Vogue, L’uomo Vogue
Media coverage: Sky Arte HD