Joan Morey, three-part project ‘COLLAPSE’, various locations, Barcelona, 20 September 2018–13 January 2019. Curated by Latitudes.
Performance by Joan Morey, ‘TOUR DE FORCE. El cos utòpic’ [TOUR DE FORCE: The Utopian Body], 2017. Reenactment executed by the original performer, Eduard Escoffet. Presented in the framework of the exhibition "COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine", Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, 13 December 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 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.
A dramatic extract from the fifth act of ‘TOUR DE FORCE’ (2017), which has only previously been witnessed by an audience of six people in the setting of a white limousine driving on a route through Barcelona. The project as a whole puts together a conceptual history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic—from the fear and stigma surrounding diagnosis and infection in the 1980s and 1990s to the possibility today of its management and control via pharmaceutical compliance.
This performance corresponds to the latter historical context, addressing the complexities of understanding the disease in an epidemiological sense and as a symbolic phenomenon enmeshed with global governance, human rights and civil liberties. A performer dressed in black leather garments makes a ritualistic reading from a mobile device, listing the dates on which new antiretroviral drugs have been approved for use in the US, beginning from 1987. The brand names of each of the medications join the litany of dates, and the pill trademarks are repeated as though they were figures worthy of veneration: Saint Genvoya, Saint Stribild, Saint Odefsey, etc.
The subtitle refers to a 1966 radio broadcast by the philosopher Michel Foucault, known for his histories of healthcare and sexuality, who in 1983 became the first public figure in France to die from an AIDS-related illness.
© 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 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/anterior...
Joan Morey, three-part project ‘COLLAPSE’, various locations, Barcelona, 20 September 2018–13 January 2019. Curated by Latitudes.
Performance by Joan Morey, ‘TOUR DE FORCE. El cos utòpic’ [TOUR DE FORCE: The Utopian Body], 2017. Reenactment executed by the original performer, Eduard Escoffet. Presented in the framework of the exhibition "COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine", Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, 13 December 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 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.
A dramatic extract from the fifth act of ‘TOUR DE FORCE’ (2017), which has only previously been witnessed by an audience of six people in the setting of a white limousine driving on a route through Barcelona. The project as a whole puts together a conceptual history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic—from the fear and stigma surrounding diagnosis and infection in the 1980s and 1990s to the possibility today of its management and control via pharmaceutical compliance.
This performance corresponds to the latter historical context, addressing the complexities of understanding the disease in an epidemiological sense and as a symbolic phenomenon enmeshed with global governance, human rights and civil liberties. A performer dressed in black leather garments makes a ritualistic reading from a mobile device, listing the dates on which new antiretroviral drugs have been approved for use in the US, beginning from 1987. The brand names of each of the medications join the litany of dates, and the pill trademarks are repeated as though they were figures worthy of veneration: Saint Genvoya, Saint Stribild, Saint Odefsey, etc.
The subtitle refers to a 1966 radio broadcast by the philosopher Michel Foucault, known for his histories of healthcare and sexuality, who in 1983 became the first public figure in France to die from an AIDS-related illness.
© 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 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/anterior...