A Performance Affair - The Second Edition: re:production
05 Sep 2019 - 08 Sep 2019
A Performance Affair (APA) is a dynamic platform for performance art that stimulates discussions and discourse around the economies of performance. APA aims to provide a full spectrum of relevant content to a public audience while offering artists, gallerists, curators, and collectors an arena in which to discuss the unique challenges that surround this sector and play.
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Espace Vanderborght - Rue de l'Ecuyer 1000
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A Performance Affair (APA) is a dynamic platform for performance art that stimulates discussions and discourse around the economies of performance. APA aims to provide a full spectrum of relevant content to a public audience while offering artists, gallerists, curators, and collectors an arena in which to discuss the unique challenges that surround this sector and play. A Performance Affair is not another art fair, but a flexible stage geared towards stimulating the acquisition of performance art while finding solutions for its development and sustainability.
Following The Panopticon, APA’s inaugural edition last September, this second edition entitled: re:production will transform the second and third floors of the Vanderborght Building in Brussels into an open space designed for artists and their collaborators to present new and historical works to the public, including potential collectors, in a wide range of formats. re:production will attempt to determine the key elements necessary to perform, transcribe, document, transfer ownership and restage a performance. What is the collectable matter of a performance? How do the protocols, scenarios, recordings, or artefacts relate? re:production will question and challenge the ephemeral nature of performance, the ethics of documentation, and ascertain how video and other means of representation can benefit the discipline.
Visitors to APA’s re:production will become participants in an augmented environment showcasing live content both throughout the space and online. The experience will allow visitors to draw distinctions between the performance itself, its live broadcast and recording, any objects or residue, and also the archiving of the work to attain a better understanding of the complex web of the participants, institutions, and rights that can advance this fragile form of expression.
The APA Bureau
A common area designated The APA Bureau will be dedicated for planned and impromptu meetings around the economic aspects and protocols of performance, where key players can all gather to discuss aspects such as the acquisition, dissemination, and preservation of performance art today.
The Departure / Arrival Board (D/AB)
Activities during re:production will be tracked in real time on the D/AB and broadcast live on APA’s two YouTube Channels. Short and long durational Performances will overlap throughout the venue creating dialogues between works within an immersive environment filled with a performances to discover.
Selection Committee
Adam Budak, chief curator of the National Gallery (Prague, Czech Republic)
Ellen de Bruijne, gallerist (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Aaron Cezar, founding director of Delfina Foundation (London, UK)
Frédéric de Goldschmidt, collector (Brussels, Belgium)
Iordanis Kerenidis & Piergiorgio Pepe, collectors (Paris, France)
ORLAN, artist (Paris, France)
Chantal Pontbriand, art curator, critic, and art consultant (Montreal, Canada)
A Performance Affair seeks to place key players in the same arena and around the same table, while presenting all of the activities on the APA channels throughout the Affair. Ultimately, the event aims to stimulate the purchase of performance art by conceiving and showing works that can be acquired during its events.
A Performance Affair is a Brussels based non-profit association with international outreach. Conceived and founded by Liv Vaisberg and Will Kerr, APA aims at gathering all players interested in the economies of performance. Events are open to the public and free of charge.
Espace Vanderborght
Rue de l'Ecuyer 1000
Owned by the City of Brussels, this building with a large shop window stands in the centre of Brussels, only a stone’s throw from the Grand Place. It occupies an impressive 6,000 m² of space spread over 5 stories. Built for the “Nouveaux Établissements Vanderborght Frères”, who traded in household products like carpets, knick-knacks, garden furniture, bedding, etc., the building was designed by architects Govaerts and Van Vaerenbergh, who were used to working together, having previously collaborated on the house of Alice and David van Buren, now the van Buren Museum. The building works, which began in 1932, were completed in 1935. Built in a modernist style, the building did away with ornamental elements, favouring function over appearance. With remarkable large shop front windows that allow for greater visibility, each story is made up of one large concrete floorplan that can be easily modified thanks to a system of sliding partition walls on tracks. Other stand-out features of this building are its terraces, which served as exhibition spaces for the company’s garden furniture back in the day, but also spots to relax and enjoy a cup of tea. The store went bankrupt in 1980. The Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium once thought of moving their collections into the Vanderborght building, but the project never took off. The venue today welcomes many exhibitions, mainly centred around contemporary art. Three major events are organised every year: - Carte de Visite ARTopenKUNST in February: an exhibition dedicated to amateur and professional artists living or working in the City of Brussels. More than 200 artists take over the building for a whole weekend. http://cartedevisite.brussels/ - The Independent in April: a contemporary art fair from New Year has set up shop in Brussels. http://independenthq.com/ - Strokar in May: an exhibition dedicated to street art and photography that gathers artists from Brussels and further afield. http://strokar.be/ Furthermore, other, non-recurrent exhibitions also take place in the Vanderborght building and are open to all at a reasonable price.
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