PLEASE, DISTURB! Controversial and crazy performances at Palais De Tokyo
PALAIS DE TOKYO, Paris
Do Disturb Festival non-stop : performance, danse, cirque, design...
Palais De Tokyo Paris organized for the third time its festival «DO DISTURB!» and global:artfair had the honor to be at its opening and to visit it. For this third edition the Museum (which is a mile stone for contemporary art) proposed a non-stop program with more than 40 works. All of them were very original, new, effervescent and the public could experience the mix of performance, theatre and music.
Like for the past editions, DO DISTURB! Decided to collaborate with other cultural institutions, both French and international. For the first edition in fact, the organizers worked together with big names such as MoMa or Tate; for the second edition they collaborated with French and international art schools; for this edition (2017) they decided to invite some of the principal performance festival in the world to participate. For this reason we could read in the program names such as Dias Da Dança (Portugal), Santarcangelo Festival (Italy), Time-Based Festival (USA).
Performance "Big Breath", Séverin Guelpa
This edition was particularly significant, as it integrated in a delicate moment: the dates of the festival coincided with the weekend of the French election and the day before the inauguration there was an attack in the center of Paris. It is in moments like this, that art plays a role and performance is an artistic genre, which is characterized by a strong engagement, which involves many agents, which include the artist, the public, but also the institutional space, the time. Performance is a discipline that breaks the eventual barriers between different practices and disciplines. For the artist, a performance is an incredible medium, that allows to react to the present time and situation, because a performance is ephemeral and doesn’t need a durable exhibition to express itself. Thank to this ephemeral property, the performance creates immediate reaction and it is a “form of reactivity to the world around us”, as the general commissioner of the Festival Vittoria Matarrese said during the festival’s opening on Friday.
Performance "Untitled (Double face)", Naama Tsabar
DO DISTURB is then a transversal and dynamic festival which encourages the artistic survey and supports young artists who are interested in the corporal expression, in which artistic and social borders dissolve and therefore leave place to new experiments and ways of expression.
Within the framework of socially and politically focused work, we would like to put some attention on the performance Suffragette City, by Lara Schnitger. In her work, the artist shows her interest for a performance which puts together sculpture, creation of clothes, architecture, posters, graffiti, etc. She uses different media in order to create a sort of “hybrid march” which aims to be a political protest, but also a fight for women’s rights and a feminist demonstration at the same time. In her work she explores the relationship between the artistic traditions of the academies and the urban ones.
Performance "Suffragette City", Lara Schnitger
Lara Schnitger participated to the Women’s March in Washington, by bringing her Protest Parade on the street.
Another artist who likes to mix many different media is Célia Gondol, who presented her Slow at the Palais De Tokyo. With her work, the artist tries to concretize her curiosity for the world around her, and to do that she uses dance, sculpture and theatre and combines them, in perpetual experimentation which aims to knowledge and discovery. In this performance, she invites the viewers to pair up and dance together, with a banana leaf between their bodies.
Performance "Slow", Célia Gondol
Palais de Tokyo, a site for contemporary art
Between dance and visual arts, her work let us dive in an intimate and delicate universe, where the elements of our environment (noise, colours, temperature, etc.) are perceived in a new and different way. The dancing couples occupy the museum’s space and participate to the performance, during a time which seems to be dilated.
Text and Photos by (c) Carmen Frigerio
Do Disturb!
Festival non-stop: performance,
danse, cirque, design...
PALAIS DE TOKYO
13, avenue du Président Wilson
75 116 Paris
