Marie de Brugerolle

Film as Performance is the new chapter of Post-Performance Future, which investigates the impact of performativity on the visual arts. It will lead to a series of programs, lectures, and a book. Los Angeles, the city of “The Industry” (as John Baldessari called it), is the perfect territory in which to investigate the entanglements, iterations, challenges, and new forms of performativity within moving images.

Film as Performance considers film as a performative form, challenging conventional screen time and fragmented forms of attention. “Cinema without cinema,” outside the frame, using low-tech devices; the “queer times” of performance; staging the camera, which becomes a persona. The arts of time, cinema, and performance share a common history. Here, film is considered as both a language and a form that perform their own poetics.

Art schools such as CalArts, where Kathryn Bigelow was invited by Baldessari; Sharon Lockhart and her television program; and Godard’s lectures at UCLA, which inspired Cointet, as well as the New Genres and Film Department (Andrea Fraser, Vishal Judgeo), are important sources of research, extending beyond the entertainment economy.

I wish to create bridges between fields and generations and stimulate dialogue: from historical artists with whom I have worked to emerging generations, and from studio directors to visual artists. For this, I will study archives at the Getty Research Institute, the Mike Kelley Foundation, the John Baldessari Family Archives, and LAICA. I will meet with curators at the Performance Museum, MOCA, LACMA, and the Hammer Museum, and engage in conversations with LACE, the New Theater Hollywood, and REDCAT.

Art schools play a pivotal role in this transmission, including CalArts, Otis, and UC Riverside. I will conduct interviews with artists including Coleman Collins, Anna Wittenberg, P. Staff, Asher Hartman, Sondra Perry, and Aria Dean, whose practices open up new paths between Film as Performance and the staging of poetry.

Los Angeles, the city of “The Industry,” is the perfect territory in which to investigate the iterations, challenges, and new forms of performativity within moving images: Film as Performance. This new chapter of Post-Performance Future considers the dynamics of Los Angeles within the context of contemporary America. Irony, performance as a means of expression, the aesthetics of editing, performing the self, and the intimacy between language and visual poetry are among the tools Californian artists use in an ongoing deconstruction of the society of the spectacle from within. This creates a polysemic scene and a space from which to explore the dysfunctions of our time.

Within this dynamic, art schools and experimental spaces are pivotal. CalArts has been a breeding ground for Californian conceptual art and for early hybrid approaches combining video and performance, in connection with REDCAT. UCLA’s tradition of institutional critique, notably through Andrea Fraser; Otis, where Guy de Cointet taught and where Asher Hartman teaches today; and ArtCenter, where Mike Kelley and Stephen Prina were active, have all served as incubators for artists. These artists made Super 16mm films and performances in response to the economy of production. This context of emulation and exchange provides an important framework for my research.

The archives at the Getty Research Institute and the Mike Kelley Foundation will be precious sources, alongside conversations with curators at the Performance Museum, MOCA, LACMA, and the Hammer Museum. The New Theater Hollywood, LACE, and The Brick are ideal partners, given their ongoing engagement with the intersection of performance and film. I will meet with artists including Sharon Lockhart, Paul McCarthy, Coleman Collins, Anna Wittenberg, P. Staff, Aria Dean, Sondra Perry, and Olivia Mole.