Theatre performance “Guy de Cointet. Five Sisters y Monologue”. With the Dutch company If I can’t dance
Date: December16, 2011
Venue: Nouvel building, Auditorio 400
Time: 21 h
Admission: free, first-served. Invitation at the box office collection of the Museum from December 12
Related exhibition: Locus Solus. Impressions of Raymond Roussel.
From the late 1960s until his untimely death in 1983, French-born artist Guy de Cointet was an influential member of the Los Angeles art scene. De Cointet's performances are surreal sceneries in which ordinary, daily events are linked to specific objects, colours and letters – often in a lucid way, with elements from high and low culture existing alongside each other.
Five Sisters is a play that embodies the West Coast culture of health and beauty. It presents the story of five sisters, who busy themselves with the problems and pleasures of modern life on a Sunday afternoon. The California sun provokes their reactions, emotions and moods. With Five Sisters, de Cointet explored the affective wellbeing of five women who have changing, restless, encounters in their parental home, discussing issues of wardrobe, suntan, health, exotic holidays, work and painting (one of the sisters is an artist). The often absurdist content and collage-like structure of the text, and the quick pace of the sisters' meetings on stage all point to the influence of de Cointet's hero Raymond Roussel, and to his love for soap opera - a genre that was widely available to him in LA.
Five Sisters is the last performance that was staged during Guy de Cointet’s lifetime and marks a departure from his earlier work in its attention to light as the main catalyst of emotion. Guy de Cointet collaborated with the sculptor Eric Orr (1939-1998) who created the lighting, set design and part of the sound, and with the musician Joseph Hammer.In the new production, the light and sound plan are reconstructed by Orr's daughter Elizabeth Orr. The performers are dressed by Monique van Heist.
Performance in Residence
This staging of Five Sisters is the result of a research project conducted by art historian Marie de Brugerolle, as part of If I Can’t Dance’s programme Performance in Residence. With this programme, If I Can’t Dance aims to research performances as case studies and proposes to connect archival research to practice. If I Can't Dance wants to offer researchers a context for in-depth study into performances that we consider important from an art historical perspective, as well as from the point of view of contemporary practice in performance. It differs from academic research in its intention to directly connect archival research to the practice of production and (re)creation.
Marie de Brugerolle
Art historian, curator and dramatist Marie de Brugerolle has introduced a wide audience to the work of Guy de Cointet. De Brugerolle is professor at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. This year her monograph on de Cointet was published by JRP|Ringier. Her documentary film 'Who’s that Guy?… tell me more about Guy de Cointet' also premiered this year. In this film, de Cointet’s friends and colleagues such as Paul McCarthy, Robert Wilhite, Richard Jackson, John Baldessari, Larry Bell and Barbara Smith remember the artist.
Five Sisters
Concept play and text: Guy de Cointet
Light and Stage Design: Eric Orr
Director: Jane Zingale
Dramaturge: Marie de Brugerolle
Performance: Violeta Sanchez, Einat Tuchman, Adva Zakai, Veridiana Zurita
Light & sound: Elizabeth Orr
Wardrobe: Monique van Heist
Publication: Will Holder
Curator: Frédérique Bergholtz
Curatorial assistant: Vivan Ziherl
Language: English spoken
