"From Public Space To Museum. The Musealization of Performative and Public Art". International Symposium organized by Julie Bawin (Université de Liège) and Maria Elena Minuto (Université de Liège; KU Leuven). Monday 21 November 2022. M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Antwerp. 9:30am - 5:00pm.

The conference will take place in M HKA Auditorium. Free entrance, but registration is required: https://forms.gle/87Vv19Uy4NDnpFa2A.

PRESENTATION

In 1977, the International Cultural Centre (ICC) invited Gordon Matta-Clark (1943- 1978) to realize a project in an empty office building opposite the Steen in Antwerp. The work Office Baroque, made by the artist for this occasion, is intended as ‘a walk through a panoramic arabesque’ marked by performance art’s engagement with urban space and social dissent. Taking Matta-Clark’s structural cut as a conceptual and methodological starting point and promoted by the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’, the conference will bring together scholars in visual arts, as well as museum directors, archivists and curators to discuss from comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives the manifold relationships between public and performative practices with regard to the process of musealization by contemporary art institutions. How can a live and ephemeral action, originally conceived for the public space, become the object of a cultural institutionalization? Once included in the collection of an art museum, in what form is the performance preserved, exhibited and perceived? Is it a matter of ‘replaying’ it occasionally in the public space from the documentation associated with it (photographs, films, protocols, notes, etc.), which the museum itself has sought to perpetuate? Do the documents carry an aesthetic value? Is the musealization of performative and public art always governed by an intent of materialization? What status should we give to objects that are sometimes assimilated to ‘relics’, sometimes to genuine art creations? These questions, which deal with both reenactment practices and the controversial aspect of collecting and archiving live or immaterial forms of art, do not exhaust the critical and the theoretical overview of the subject. The scholarly presentations given by Mélanie Boucher (UQO), Éric Mangion (Villa Arson, Nice), Johan Pas (AP School of Arts, Antwerp), Annalisa Rimmaudo (MNAM – Centre Pompidou) and Pierre-Olivier Rollin (BPS22, Charleroi) will discuss a number of seminal case studies on the issue by underlining that there are as many performative works in the public space as there are ways of exhibiting and perpetuating them in the museum space.

The conference is conceived and organized by Julie Bawin (ULiège) and Maria Elena Minuto (ULiège; KU Leuven) in collaboration with the The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC): « Des nouveau usages des collections dans les musées d’art ».

PROGRAM

9:30 Welcome

10:00 Julie BAWIN, President of the FNRS Contact Group, ULiège Maria Elena MINUTO, Postdoctoral Fellow FNRS, ULiège.
Introduction

10:30 Annalisa RIMMAUDO, Curator at the Musée national d’art moderne- Centre Georges Pompidou.
Œuvres « performées » et à « performer ». Quelques cas dans la collection du Centre Pompidou

Coffee Break

11:45 Johan PAS, Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp City as a Site.
Office Baroque, ICC & Interventions in Public Space

Lunch

14:00 Mélanie BOUCHER, Professor at the Université du Québec en Outaouais
Quand le musée acquiert des œuvres qui dépendent de l’espace public : Janet Cardiff et l’œuvre performative « Théorie du complot » au Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal

14:45 Pierre-Olivier ROLLIN, Director of the BPS22 - Musée d’art de la Province de Hainaut
Immortaliser la mort. Les paradoxes de « The Death of James Lee Byars »

Coffee Break

16:00 Éric MANGION, Director of the Centre d’art de la Villa Arson à Nice
« Le Dais » de Patrick Van Caeckenbergh. Marcher sous le ciel

16:45 Conclusions

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Julie BAWIN: Professor of Contemporary Art (Université de Liège), President of the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’ and co-researcher SSHRC
Mélanie BOUCHER: Professor of Museum Studies (Université du Québec en Outaouais) and researcher SSHRC
Maria Elena MINUTO: Postdoctoral Fellow (F.R.S.-FNRS) and member of the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’

ORGANIZER COMMITTEE

Julie BAWIN: Professor of Contemporary Art (Université de Liège), President of the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’ and co-researcher SSHRC Jan DE VREE: Head of Archive and Collection, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp
Maria Elena MINUTO: Postdoctoral Fellow (F.R.S.-FNRS) and member of the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’
Alix NYSSEN: PhD Candidate-Teaching assistant at the Service d’Histoire de l’Art de l’Époque Contemporaine (Université de Liège)
Marjorie RANIERI: PhD Candidate (Université de Mons) and assistant of the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’