“TURANDOT: Elettra, how are you, dear?
ELETTRA: I'm obsessed, thank you very much.
TURANDOT: Unrequited love?
In this economy???
There is no time for fanatical intimacies.
No time for obsessions other than capitalist productivity, disciplined subjectivity, and neoliberal self-improvement.”
Marijke De Roover, Live, Laugh, Limerence, 2020
The artists will show their video works, present a live online performance, and discuss the relationship between art, labor, pleasure, and sincerity in the artist talk.
As well as a pre-planned event, Le bordel éclectique (Eclectic Mess) is the result of an unexpected confluence of events, which is reflected in its format. The roles are mixed, and the key ethical objective is to gain pleasure from making art, of a work, within a collective and from the encounter with the audience.
“If we could create an experience, a rehearsal, a presentation of who we are, what would it be? Art academies, science schools, and art institutions teach us to be insincere: we are expected to be exceptionally authentic and deep. But we have come here to get pleasure, and we hope you can love what we do. Art is an intellectual, emotional, and material labor, but why couldn’t it be deep yet at the same time able to bring pleasure? Why does it have to be associated primarily with trials and tribulations, suffering and pain?”—Marijke De Roover, Khasan Kurbanbaev, Sasha Pevak, Alex Schulz Steckman.
Artists taking part in the event purposefully reject any curatorial concepts, thematization of their work, and the idea of making the event a transgressive experience. Instead, they are looking for a way to share what they love and to do it the way they like it, hoping that their work will resonate with the audience. They use the event as an opportunity to imagine a potential space of freedom—a safe space for themselves and their work, where they do not present themselves as one thing, but as they are, and despite the great distance that separates them. Their works are also very different. Yet, they find themselves very close to each other, free from discipline, in a great eclectic mess—as free as one can be. Artists accept this mess, which is both their ethos and the substance of this collective work. Looking back at the choice of works which was natural and spontaneous—if something common at all could be discerned in the works presented—it could include questions of identity in the era of new technology, love and queerness, emotions and nostalgia, “imitation” and “authenticity.”
The group work will finish with a performance by Alex Schulz Steckman and a discussion that will be broadcast live on YouTube from 19:00. The four artists will discuss the relationships between art, labor, pleasure, and sincerity, share their past experiences and attempt to present their shared ideas in the context of these subjects.