Perphoto took part in the experimental laboratory “Still Standing Still | Medialities of the Performative Lab”

Parsons University Paris Gallery (19-29 January)
On-site Lab: 19 – 21 January 2024

Concept: Emmanuel Cohen (Parsons Paris, The New School) & Wiebke Leister (Royal College of Art)

With: Emmanuel Cohemn | Wiebke Leister | Filipe Figueiredo | Federica Stevanin | Cosimo Chiarelli

Modelling: Angelo Lewis | Jade Herbu | Natalie coco_de_mars

“The ‘Medialities of the Performative Lab’ proposes a heuristic experimentation of the connections between performing bodies, photo-filmic devices and situations.

Starting from a seemingly simple exercise – documenting the performative act of standina still – we are investigating how artistic works are negotiating the borders of stillness/movement, falling/ failing, activity/passivity (rising/reclining, agency/inactivity), camera/ body/image, performing for the camera (recording/creating, documentation work, Intermedialities), posing/posture/duration

Exploring the act and the process of being-photographed and staging-for-the-camera, we are asking a gallery audience to engage with different apparatuses such as image-making installations in order to open a space for an additive and iterative ‘public process of making’ that becomes an exhibition in-progress.

Based on precedents from the history of performance art and contemporary art practices, we will develop a parkour of installation-stations that enfold apparative situations to test the relationship of bodies and cameras based on different event scores. These will resuit in participatory acts of creating in-order-to-notice and being-with in order to learn from each other’s experiences past and present:

Arrangements and relationships that will constantly change, equally creating shifting intervals between quasi-choreographic installation-apparatus-recoraing works.”