Untitled
Mar’15 – Sep’17
Peformance, Workshop
Website
Paris, Sao Paulo
Untitled explored the constraints of political and social structures inherited from outdated, elitist frameworks rooted in the 17th-century Westphalian treaty. These systems, enshrined in rigid governance and bound by artificial borders, maintain power through stale bureaucracies and exclusionary representation, protecting an elite class wary of innovation. In an era where information flows freely, the persistence of these structures is increasingly absurd—nation-states still wield absolute control over “internal” matters as if morality and human rights are subjective and territorially bound. Meanwhile, political representation mirrors archaic models, cementing zero-sum games and stifling individual self-realization.
Untitled challenged these rigid frameworks by reimagining societal genesis through the lens of contemporary and performance art. The project proposed art as the wordless experiential space where a generation could build and live out its wilder dreams. Co/created with friend and curator Denis Maksimov, we designed ephemeral experimental societies that bypassed conventional political frames, fostering freedom of thought as art has done for centuries. These temporary untitled societies were documented as an evolving testament to human potential for reform and reinvention, inviting participants to experience freedom beyond established boundaries. Untitled took the form of an artist-present collaborative workshop and culminated in a performance / happening at the Louvres.
Workshop
The world at the edge of words is hanging in the space of ideas. It is waiting to be picked, brought into the space of experience where ideas are lived out rather than heard, written or spoken. In Sao Paulo’s Matilha Cultural gallery, we have created an event where participants are immersed in art performances, relational aesthetics and interventionist experiments. We are taking living art out of museums and into the most unexpected places. It weaves in the imaginations of the brightest thinkers to create an art piece attendees live. Art is infinite creativity and fertile soil for groundbreaking ideas. Not a tool to escape but an instrument to create. A breeder of worlds and a lab where being alive can be redefined.
In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida distinguished between “Le Futur” and “L’avenir”, respectively, French for “The Future” and “What is To Come”. The first is the one we plan and know. The second is the unpredictable kind. We’ve grown fond of the first and wary of the second. Foresaking the unknown however brought the end of tomorrow. Somewhere on the way, we lost the future. The next frontier slowly disappeared. History seemed over and a radically new configuration of our lives suddenly sounded strange. What is stranger still us is that we stopped giving dangerous ideas a chance. Untitled is an experiment to do precisely that. It is a project to destroy the boundaries we have started to think are final. It has a title. Yet it has none. It is ours yet not ours at all. It is meant to persist and designed to disappear.
Performance
The Louvres Manifesto or To Mona, was shouted in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvres Museum on the 9th of May 2015. The performer was holding up a blue umbrella in the style of a museum guide. He was surrounded by two other performers standing on his right and left. He stood in front of Paolo Veronese’s “The Wedding Feast at Cana”.
Once he was done reading the manifesto, the performer was chased by guards. He did not try to run. He stopped and had a conversation with them. Having explained the Manifesto was directed at the Mona Lisa as a symbol of things gone astray, he was told: “If you don't want to look at the Mona Lisa, don’t come to the Louvres.” He wrote that down.