Katya Ev
(ekaterina vasilyeva)

 

" At New Space, Katya Ev brings a variation of the performance Visitors of an Exhibition Space are Suggested to 'Do Nothing'  which she showed at the exhibition concluding a course at HISK. That one dealt with the neoliberal codes and those of an institutional contemporary art event, holding the middle ground between a gallery space and the aesthetics of a start-up. Visitors, by signing a contract in which they committed to doing nothing for at least an hour, could sit in a comfortable chair made available for a minimum hourly wage (10.25 euros gross per hour), after which they received a paycheck. 'Initially it was a response to the pressure to produce a lot, including for artists. By having a contract and a paycheck, I make that this ends up in the national archives,' the artist said.

 

In Liege, the performance now called the " rien " will take into account the history of the place - it will note the word "rien" on a wall of the garage, among the texts already present - and its place in the working-class neighborhood, to appeal to a different audience. Katya Ev participates in the project Art au Centre', where she displays a poster - a readymade of a greatly enlarged 'for rent' poster with the words 'Ne rien faire contre rémunération' (Do nothing for a fee) and a phone number. This intervention connects the performance to the rental model.

 

When I point out to her that it is indeed also a question of the renting out her body, which is linked to prostitution, Katya Ev agrees and she clarifies: "For me, this performance was interesting because of the confrontation between 'doing nothing' and class privilege. It is about deconstructing the idea that 'doing nothing' is a waste of time, which is radically opposed here to the idea of otium advocated by ancient philosophy and then widely developed in Western thought: an aristocratic privilege obtained through the exploitation of others. Katya Ev: "By assigning a symbolic value - through a financial value - this performance offers someone time and space to be themselves. And that question of rental is a knot, it's all or nothing. "

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Colette Dubois, 'Entretenir vaut mieux, Marc Buchy and Katya Ev', HART Magazine n°223 (Be)

 

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                          conceptual prism

                          how to understand 'doing nothing'