A thematic project by Lars Bang Larsen, Frederique Bergholz and Annie Fletcher (October 2009-March 2010).
This thematic project develops out of the curatorial platform If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution that since 2005 has manifested itself in exhibitions, performance programmes and discursive events. The thematic project sets out to explore alternative conceptual frameworks of the masquerade, which is also the theme of the third edition of If I Can’t Dance….
By masking one hides or plays a role. At the same time, wearing a mask may have a liberating effect, or expose something new or somebody else. When might an artist engage in the act of masquerading, and what does she hereby organise and produce? How do art works, languages, bodies masquerade? If donning a mask is a question of mastering appearance and surface, what does it mean to be ‘in character’ in this way?
Setting out from the historical trajectory of the concept in psychoanalysis, critical theory, feminism and the theatre, we will move freely through cultural studies, linguistics and anthropology. We intend not only to ask who are the bearers of masks and who may be behind it, but also investigate the positions from which we are looking at the mask. This may lead us to question issues of spectatorship, performativity, representation, the construction of knowledge and subjectivity, of truth and fiction, madness and power relations.
The thematic project includes four public lectures (speakers to be announced) and a public film program organised by curator Francesco Bernadelli. Curators and initiators of If I Can’t Dance… Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher will introduce the programme in collaboration with curator and art critic Lars Bang Larsen. Lars will also lead the subsequent thematic project sessions at Piet Zwart Institute. The sessions will be organised around the lectures, the readings that participants are expected to do, and discussions between the participants. A compendium of texts will be prepared.
In addition to this, participants to the thematic project are invited to the monthly If I Can’t Dance Tonight performances at the Frascati theatre in Amsterdam. These are followed by artist’s talks in Rotterdam the following day.
Participants are also welcome to attend the conclusive event of If I Can’t Dance’s current edition, in the weekend of 19-20-21 March 2010 at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. During a three-day programme the artists of If I Can’t Dance… will present their works, and we will host a symposium. At this event we will also launch a masquerade reader, to which participants to the thematic project are invited to submit a one page visual contribution.
About If I Can’t Dance… and Edition III: Masquerade
If I Can’t Dance… is a rolling curatorial platform that revolves around a spirit of open artistic questioning and long-term curatorial engagement. If I Can’t Dance… is based in an interest in visual art practices related to performance and investigates topics relevant to both the artistic and the societal spheres. Independent of any fixed institutional location, every two years If I Can’t Dance… starts up a new edition with a group of artists who are asked to work over time within a specific conceptual framework and develop new pieces. The current edition explores the theme of masquerade and presents projects ‘in repertory’ by the artists Joachim Koester, Jon Mikel Euba, Keren Cytter, Olivier Foulon, Sarah Pierce and Suchan Kinoshita. So far this has resulted in exhibitions and performance programmes in Copenhagen, Bilbao, Amsterdam and Dublin and a series of monthly performances by artists featuring Emma Hedditch, Maria Pask, Jimmy Robert, Ivana Muller, Stefanie Seibold, Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, Rutch Buchanan, Yael Davids, Aurelien Froment, Fia Bäckstrom, Luca Frei and Sung Hwan Kim and David di Gregorio. In addition, If I Can’t Dance… organizes a discursive programme of public lectures, a monthly reading group and workshops with the master programmes of the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede and the Piet Zwart Insitute in Rotterdam.
More info about If I Can’t Dance… and its two former editions can be found here.