We are sitting on a bench watching time go by.
Participants will experience performance through the perception of time and space, the two basic elements of this language, and the magic that spreads when a performance is a success. It is a magic spawned by the performance’s ephemeral nature, different from the magic we may feel before a work of art that gives us goose bumps. Installations, sculptures, paintings and videos are complete and unalterable once they leave the artist’s workshop. The observer can stop in front of a work of art for a couple of minutes or for hours, or go back to see it again. A performance exists only in a specific time-space situation. And that is irreplaceable.
One cannot cheat. It is not theatre. One has to learn a new language and try to convey it on each occasion.
The workshop will take the shape of:
A set of exercises and discussions to work together on examining the relative nature of time, the use of objects, and attempting to understand why sometimes what seems like a good idea turns into something horrible and sometimes a simple thing becomes something fantastic.
Participants will have to devise and conduct their own performances.
Inspiration is like fishing. You have to stay calm and be patient if you want to catch the right fish. And then you have to know how to cook it.
Myriam Laplante is a Canadian artist who lives in Bevagna, in a state of permanent doubt. She works with performance art, installations, video, painting, sculpture, drawings and so on. If an image is something that exists, it becomes a photograph. If it needs a different shape, it is a painting or drawing. If it cannot be flat, it is a sculpture. If it needs to move, it is a performance. If it needs to move defying the laws of gravity, it is a video. If it cannot make up its mind, it is an installation, usually with a performance.
Her work has been shown in squats, galleries and museums in Europe, North America and Asia. She works with the Black Market International performance collective.
Her works are to be found in the public collections of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Museo di Arte Contemporanea (Rome), the Galerie Nationale du Québec, the National Museum of Photography (Ottawa), the Musée de Rimouski (Canada) and the Museo Ettore Fico (Turin).