Joan Morey, three-part project ‘COLLAPSE’, various locations, Barcelona, 20 September 2018–13 January 2019. Curated by Latitudes.
Performance by Joan Morey, "LLETANIA APÒRIMA" [APORIC LITANY] (2009). Reenactment by Jordi Vall-lamora programmed within the framework of the exhibition "COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine", Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, 11 October 2018. Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy the artist.
Each of the six programmed performance reenactments is extracted from its original context as studies or scenes from earlier projects and given an independent life. These live-action fragments encompass ritualistic exercises following the artist’s rules, tableaux vivants, and dramatic orations based on texts by the artist or by playwrights such as Samuel Beckett. Whenever possible the performances maintain their original interpreters, yet inevitably they are reinforced or degraded through their repetition, adding another layer to the artist’s exploration of control.
LLETANIA APÒRIMA
[APORIC LITANY] 2009
This performance has its origins in a dramatised reading of the English text "APORIC LITANY. To Die—Waiting (in) the Limits of Truth" (2009), carried out without interruption by an actor in a recording studioand without an audience. Fragments of the text were performed in Catalan and included in the project "CRIES AND WHISPERS: Conversations with Radicals" (2009). The performance presented here can be considered a premiere, as it uses the full text of the original performance, in Catalan. APORIC LITANY was originally presented in 2009 as a pre-recorded spokenword work in English (included in full in the audio programme of the present exhibition), and excerpts of it in Catalan were also read live as part of the final part of "CRIES & WHISPERS" that same year. The second word in its title derives from aporia, a philosophical notion of dynamic uncertainty. In common use, the word litany has also come to signify a long list of failures, complaints, or disasters. The litany addressed to a deity conventionally takes the form of a series of set
invocations recited by a priest, which alternate with the invariable responses of the congregation. Yet, here, the rhythmic and rhetorical expressions that have been scripted by the artist leave no semantic room for reply, and piety has been infused
with profanity.
This dramatised, repetitive oration—at moments marked by obedience, anguish, apostasy, regret, abuse, and provocation—is delivered in Catalan by an inscrutable priest-courtier character. Because the format of the litany has been folded in on itself (believers are neither being addressed nor obediently responding), the effect of the voice is more akin to a conflicted interior monologue that stutters and recurrently ties itself into the same knot of compulsions and desires.
Text by Latitudes.
—
Since the late 1990s, Joan Morey (Mallorca, 1972) has produced an expansive body of live events, videos, installations, sound and graphic works, that has explored the intersection of theatre, cinema, philosophy, sexuality, and subjectivity. Morey’s work both critiques and embodies one of the most thorny and far-reaching aspects of human consciousness and behaviour – how we relate ourselves to others, as the oppressed or the oppressor. This central preoccupation with the exercise of power and authority seemingly accounts for the black and ominous tenor of his art.
COLLAPSE encompasses three parts. The first is presented over two floors of the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona - Fabra i Coats. ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ is a survey of ten projects from the last fifteen years of the artist’s work. An exhibition display based around vitrines and video screens deployed as if sarcophagi or reliquaries, is presented alongside a continuous programme of audio works and a schedule of live performance extracts.
The second part of COLLAPSE takes place at the Centre d’Art Tecla Sala, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (23 November 2018–13 January 2019) and is the definitive version of the touring exhibition ‘Social Body’.
Titled ‘Schizophrenic Machine’, the third and final part of the project comprises a major new performance event which will take place on January 10, 2019 at an especially resonant – yet, for the moment, deliberately undisclosed – location in Barcelona, where live action will be integrated within the longer narrative of the site’s physical and discursive past.
COLLAPSE is curated by Latitudes.
—> info: www.lttds.org/projects/morey/
—> info: ajuntament.barcelona.cat/centredart/en/projectes/3396
Joan Morey, three-part project ‘COLLAPSE’, various locations, Barcelona, 20 September 2018–13 January 2019. Curated by Latitudes.
Performance by Joan Morey, "LLETANIA APÒRIMA" [APORIC LITANY] (2009). Reenactment by Jordi Vall-lamora programmed within the framework of the exhibition "COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine", Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, 11 October 2018. Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy the artist.
Each of the six programmed performance reenactments is extracted from its original context as studies or scenes from earlier projects and given an independent life. These live-action fragments encompass ritualistic exercises following the artist’s rules, tableaux vivants, and dramatic orations based on texts by the artist or by playwrights such as Samuel Beckett. Whenever possible the performances maintain their original interpreters, yet inevitably they are reinforced or degraded through their repetition, adding another layer to the artist’s exploration of control.
LLETANIA APÒRIMA
[APORIC LITANY] 2009
This performance has its origins in a dramatised reading of the English text "APORIC LITANY. To Die—Waiting (in) the Limits of Truth" (2009), carried out without interruption by an actor in a recording studioand without an audience. Fragments of the text were performed in Catalan and included in the project "CRIES AND WHISPERS: Conversations with Radicals" (2009). The performance presented here can be considered a premiere, as it uses the full text of the original performance, in Catalan. APORIC LITANY was originally presented in 2009 as a pre-recorded spokenword work in English (included in full in the audio programme of the present exhibition), and excerpts of it in Catalan were also read live as part of the final part of "CRIES & WHISPERS" that same year. The second word in its title derives from aporia, a philosophical notion of dynamic uncertainty. In common use, the word litany has also come to signify a long list of failures, complaints, or disasters. The litany addressed to a deity conventionally takes the form of a series of set
invocations recited by a priest, which alternate with the invariable responses of the congregation. Yet, here, the rhythmic and rhetorical expressions that have been scripted by the artist leave no semantic room for reply, and piety has been infused
with profanity.
This dramatised, repetitive oration—at moments marked by obedience, anguish, apostasy, regret, abuse, and provocation—is delivered in Catalan by an inscrutable priest-courtier character. Because the format of the litany has been folded in on itself (believers are neither being addressed nor obediently responding), the effect of the voice is more akin to a conflicted interior monologue that stutters and recurrently ties itself into the same knot of compulsions and desires.
Text by Latitudes.
—
Since the late 1990s, Joan Morey (Mallorca, 1972) has produced an expansive body of live events, videos, installations, sound and graphic works, that has explored the intersection of theatre, cinema, philosophy, sexuality, and subjectivity. Morey’s work both critiques and embodies one of the most thorny and far-reaching aspects of human consciousness and behaviour – how we relate ourselves to others, as the oppressed or the oppressor. This central preoccupation with the exercise of power and authority seemingly accounts for the black and ominous tenor of his art.
COLLAPSE encompasses three parts. The first is presented over two floors of the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona - Fabra i Coats. ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ is a survey of ten projects from the last fifteen years of the artist’s work. An exhibition display based around vitrines and video screens deployed as if sarcophagi or reliquaries, is presented alongside a continuous programme of audio works and a schedule of live performance extracts.
The second part of COLLAPSE takes place at the Centre d’Art Tecla Sala, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (23 November 2018–13 January 2019) and is the definitive version of the touring exhibition ‘Social Body’.
Titled ‘Schizophrenic Machine’, the third and final part of the project comprises a major new performance event which will take place on January 10, 2019 at an especially resonant – yet, for the moment, deliberately undisclosed – location in Barcelona, where live action will be integrated within the longer narrative of the site’s physical and discursive past.
COLLAPSE is curated by Latitudes.
—> info: www.lttds.org/projects/morey/
—> info: ajuntament.barcelona.cat/centredart/en/projectes/3396