The programme extends the theme of the 58th International Art Exhibition, titled May You Live In Interesting Times, and features a line-up of artists who are defining this generation of performance. Tarek Atoui, a participant in the 58th International Art Exhibition, bridges music and contemporary art to expand notions of listening through participatory and collaborative sound performances. In a series of performative lectures and listening sessions, Vivian Caccuri, Bo Zheng, Cooking Sections, Vivien Sansour, and Invernomuto interrogate bio-politics and wider ecological concerns, from the land to the sea to the human body. In a new collaboration, Paul Maheke, Nkisi & Ariel Efraim Ashbel bring to the fore diasporic geographies, ancestral knowledge, and questions of visibility and invisibility of marginalized voices in Western-dominated history. Taken together, the performance programme opens up new and complex readings of the past, present and potential future. (artistic organizer Aaron Cezar; with the additional support of Arts Council England and Delfina Foundation)
“This year’s Exhibition, titled May You Live In Interesting Times, highlights art that exists in between accepted categories and genres – Ralph Rugoff said – and which questions the rationales behind our categorical thinking. The performance programme exemplifies this kind of approach, testing aesthetic, behavioural and social conventions in a wide range of events”.
