Katya Ev
(ekaterina vasilyeva)

View of the exhibition L'Instinct de la Matière, Zadkine Museum, Paris (Fr), performance program curated by Azad Asifovich & Noëlle Chabert 

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​Duration: 4 hours (February 2019)

Visitors: 140

Performers: 11, the artist is absent

Conditions for public: announced evening for the performance

Conditions for performers: performers are entitled as museum guards and staff, with actual museum guards absent.

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“One of the key operating parameters for (Le Plus Objet des Objets) is stealth. [...] Visitors, invited to for the performance to the evening opening, could see no stage or performers — nothing that pointed to anything answering to the event; no visible trace, in fact, of something that to all appearances seemed not to be taking place. [...] Katya Ev’s set-up replaced and augmented all of the invigilating and supervisory staff who would normally work at the reception desk, the security station outside the galleries and, as attendants, in the exhibition galleries themselves [...]

 

(Le Plus Objet des Objets) addresses the opacity, arbitrariness, and secrecy of the rule-governed orchestration of museum or gallery space. It foregrounds the overriding mechanism of control by which these zones are ordered and disciplined: that of surveillance. To this end, it magnifies and italicized the consequences of the coercive regimen by giving rise to counter-manding episodes fraught with humor, parody, contradiction and even intimations of punishment. Above all the project reveals the contours of the manufacture of consent by way of conformist obedience—a declaration more remarkable because most of the museum-going public would never imagine that their volition could be short-circuited or deferred.” John C. Welchman, En Garde, cat. ‘From Scratch to Scratch’, Ghent (Be), 2020 more >>​​  

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"(Le Plus objets des objets) explores performativity of the museum’s disciplinary apparatus. Art institutions and their legitimizing function are certainly of concern here, as well as an intention to undermine the assumption that museums offer neutral viewing conditions: museums, as we know, are ideological constructs. The language of the guards and the movements of the spectators constitute an integral part of museums power-knowledge (Foucault) established through a relationship between saying and seeing."​ Elena Sorokina, for Sciences Po Prize, 2019

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Exhibitions:​

2019 Point Zéro, Galerie Chloé Salgado, Paris (Fr), group exhibition, 2019

2020 From Scratch to Scratch (online), KASK Curatorial Studies, group exhibition, 2020

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Bibliography

2019 Elena Sorokina, critical text for Sciences Po Prize, Paris (Fr)

2019 John C. Welchman, En Garde, cat. ‘From Scratch to Scratch’, Ghent (Be)

2020 Lea Bismuth, critical text for the exhibition Point Zéro, Galerie Chloé Salgado, Paris (Fr)

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​​Credits

Script, direction: Katya Ev

​Dramaturgy, curatorial advise: Azad Asifovich

​​Performers : Elichevah Abraham, Rémy Boulanger, Philippe Chalem, Marguerite Djossou, Johanna Badjan de Junnemann, Nunez Hijo, Estelle Luques, Timothée Nay, Laurent Evourt-Orlandi, Clea Petrolesi, Théo Roux, Murman Tzuladze, Clovis Quai

Production: Katya Ev