Corpus
Founding institutions:
CAC Brétigny, Greater Paris
If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam
Playground (STUK & M), Leuven
Tate Modern, London
www.cacbretigny.com
www.ificantdance.org
www.playgroundfestival.be
www.tate.org.uk
The Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brétigny, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution in Amsterdam, Playground festival in STUK arts centre and M Museum in Leuven, and Tate Modern in London announce the initiation of a new collaborative network for commissioning performance-related work: Corpus. Corpus is created by four founding institutions, diverse in scale, character and history, who nevertheless share a longstanding interest in and engagement with performance. The institutions are represented by Pierre Bal-Blanc, Frédérique Bergholtz, Steven Vandervelden, Eva Witttocx, and Catherine Wood respectively. Our two associated partners are Bulegoa z/b in Bilbao and The Kitchen in New York. Sharing experiences, ideas, and (re)sources, Corpus aims to invest in the practice of performance and embraces its many connotations and varied intellectual kinships.
Corpus will operate within a two-year rhythm, commissioning around six to eight new works. It is a structure that assists artists in developing work over time and will allow works to evolve in repertory. Corpus wants to create conditions within which artists can experiment, or speculate, and for revisiting ideas. Process and presentation are considered equally, and the evolution of the series of works is considered as a part of the whole project. The collaboration between these partners thus creates new leverage in terms of both the specific and heterogeneous needs of performance.
The name of this network is chosen for its meaning of ‘collection’, and refers to both a ‘body of institutions’ and a ‘body of works’. The name Corpus also stresses the body as an emblem of performance. In the current flux of developments within performance—the revival of its legacies, the proliferation of an extended notion of this discipline, and an added connotation of ‘achievement’ socio-economically—the importance of the fundamental component in this discourse: the body – the corpus – will be reiterated. At risk of appearing essentialist, Corpus wants to re-open discussion of ‘the body’, in relation to notions of the ‘live’—and ‘death’—in performance.
The first two projects realised through Corpus are 18 pictures and 18 stories with Spanish artist Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, and the performance Mountain by Irish artist Orla Barry. Future announcements will provide more information regarding projects commissioned and produced by Corpus.
Isidoro Valcárcel Medina & Bulegoa z/b, 18 pictures and 18 stories
In each installment of 18 pictures and 18 stories three speakers tell a story on the basis of one photograph from Valcárcel Medina’s new work Performance in Resistance. This work is a series of 18 photographs that present 18 different actions Valcárcel Medina performed in different cities between 1965 and 1993. Many of these actions were never documented, and thus the new work addresses the frictions between the live moment and the document, past and present, fact and fabulation. During the presentations, Valcárcel Medina is available on the phone for any question the audience or speaker might want to ask him.
* 26 February 2012: If I Can’t Dance at Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam
Storytellers: Moosje Goosen, Esteban Pujals Gesalí, Emilio Moreno
* 20 April 2012: Bulegoa z/b, Bilbao
Storytellers: Jaime Vallaure, Azucena Vieites, José Díaz Cuyás
* 6 July 2012: Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona
Storytellers: Nuria Enguita, Aimar Pérez-Galí, Manuel Martínez Ribas
* 27 October 2012: CAC Brétigny, Greater Paris
Storytellers: Esther Ferrer, Jon Mikel Euba, Pierre Bal-Blanc
* 6 November 2012: BNV Producciones, Seville
Storytellers: Pedro G. Romero, Isaías Griñolo, Miren Jaio
* 11 November 2012: Playground Festival, Leuven
Storytellers: Koen Brams, Dora García, Myriam Van Imschoot
* 29 November 2012 / Exhibition until 28 July 2013: MAC São Paulo
Storytellers: Juan Domínguez, Research team from MAC-USP, Carla Zaccagnini
* September 2013: Tate Modern, London
Launch of publication Performance in Resistance. 18 pictures and 18 stories.
Orla Barry, Mountain
Language shapes our structured world, but in fact every sentence we utter is an improvisation. That is the starting point for the new work Mountain by Irish visual artist Orla Barry. She has worked with 57 words, an actor, a dancer and a musician to devise a work in which chance, fate, and a little witchcraft play equal roles in a performance that is never the same on any night. It is a show of shows, set in a décor of language objects that were used to produce the script for the show.
With Derrick Devine, Marcus Lamb, and Einat Tuchman
* 8 November & 9 November: Playground Festival, Leuven
* 25 January & 26 January, 2013: If I Can’t Dance in co-production with Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam
Corpus is supported by the Culture Programme of the European Union. The individual institutions would like to thank the Mondriaan Fund, BMW Tate Live, and Culture Ireland.
