PROJECT ARTS CENTRE - EDITION III, EPISODE 3

INTRODUCTION
Episode 3 of Edition III - Masquerade took place in the Projects Arts Centre in Dublin, from June 11 to June 13, 2009. The artists Keren Cytter, Jon Mikel Euba, Olivier Foulon, Suchan Kinoshita, Joachim Koester and Sarah Pierce presented new (episodes of) performances or performative projects.

If I Can't Dance… is delighted to collaborate with the Project Arts Centre, not least because it embeds our rolling programme in this institution’s history that tested out the boundaries between the representational regimes of theatre, performance and visual arts, something that If Can't Dance… has made the corner stone of its own investigative praxis. It forms an exciting context for the new episode in the Masquerade trajectory, as If I Can't Dance… will play on all Project's 'stages': the Gallery, the ground level theatre space the Cube and the fully functioning theater space, the Space Upstairs.

The ideas 'masquerade' invokes are myriad - questions on the role of gestures, performance and performativity, the essentialisation of the body or its dematerialization, notions of ritual, deviation and the carnivalesque. Most literally 'masquerade' attends to the significance of the mask and its relation to problems of realness and representation. All the while the structure of If I Can't Dance… asks how these artists' projects are 'performed' in the fields of visual art, theatre, film, text and elsewhere... dare we say in 'everyday life'? All of these stands are explored in a series of events, performances, films and displays. The artists not only map, in their own complex and intriguing ways, a position but also directly unmask the viewer, the participant, and the collaborator in the process.

KEREN CYTTER: History in the Making Or The Secret DiarIES Of Linda Schultz
The character of Cytter’s work employs the formulation of an alienated theatricality and a highly stylized vernacular of acting. Here these elements find form in a series of performances and films under the umbrella title 'History in the Making' which all spring from the same story and will lead from one to the other during the project’s development from September to November.

In Project Arts Centre she will present a theatrical performance in the Space Upstairs. This script tells the story of a man that wanted to change his life. So he divorced his wife, and married another. After a while he noticed her face was changing and his face was changing too - drastically. As if it was the face of another man... READ MORE

JON MIKEL EUBA: Lecture on 'Re:Horse
Jon Mike Euba's multi-faceted performance 'Re: Horse', described by him as a "live concert of images", fuses elements of a live impromptu filming with the mistake-filled context of the rehearsal. A white horse, live present in the space, and a projection of the legendary recording made by Andy Warhol of a rehearsal of the Velvet Underground ('Symphony of Sounds') are connected by a score that is executed by two cameramen. In the film they shoot, numerous connections are made between man and woman, human being and animal, object and limb etc.

Euba will give a lecture performance that is based on this performance and in which he, together with the audience, will analyse the fundamental elements that construct a performance and its witness. READ MORE

OLIVIER FOULON: The Soliloquy of the Broom
Olivier Foulon’s project 'The Soliloquy of the Broom' focuses on the concept of masquerade in relation to painting. Central to this work is the portrait 'Jo, the Beautiful Irish Girl' painted by Gustave Courbet in 1865 in Trouville. It shows a lady named Jo, mistress and model of the artist James Whistler, looking at herself and her hair in a mirror. Due to great demand Gustave Courbet copied the painting several times.

The four versions belong nowadays to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, the National Museum of Stockholm and to a private collector. Olivier Foulon brought the four paintings together with the help of 16mm film and visualizes not only early forms of mass production in art, but works with the concept of a model that is used as a template for a painting which itself then becomes the model for another painting. Olivier Foulon's artistic work shows arrangements through which art history can be renegotiated and interpreted anew. READ MORE

SUCHAN KINOSHITA: Light Conversations
In her project for If I Can't Dance..., Suchan Kinoshita will throw certain 'roles' of director, viewer and performer into play. Through staged choreographies she will think about the institutions' role as an art centre and as a public space. A space in which visitors can enact different roles through 'detours' proposed by the artist. Within the spectrum of the roles of spectatorship, represented by the extremes of either distant inquiry or vital embodiment, Kinoshita aims to activate different 'registers'.

For Project Arts Centre Kinoshita will create 'Light Conversations' – a piece for voice and light. In this installation, the viewer/listener is invited to actively interpret the interplay between light and language, respond to his or her visual and auditory experience. This piece will form the prologue of a newly developed installation that will be shown in the Gallery on June 11, 12 and 13 and will depart from existing light plans used for theatre, transforming the white cube into a stage for new situations and encounters. READ MORE

SARAH PIERCE: An Art Work In The Third Person
Since 2003, Sarah Pierce has used an umbrella term - 'The Metropolitan Complex' - to describe her art practice. Despite its institutional resonance, this title does not signify an organisation. Instead, it demonstrates Pierce's broad understanding of cultural work, articulated through various discursive working methods, involving papers, interviews, archives, talks and exhibitions. Her primary focus during If I Can't Dance..., has included a notion of 'being student' which Pierce develops "as a state of immediacy - the quality of being in direct and instant involvement with something that gives rise to a sense of urgency or excitement." The installation in Project’s Cube presents nine interviews with art students from the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede, all dealing with a historical relationship between performance and "presentness". READ MORE