Katya Ev
(ekaterina vasilyeva)

Image 2: view of the exhibition Point Zéro, Galerie Chloé Salgado, Paris (Fr), 2019; on the right - wall lettering; on the left - contract (score) of the performance

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fictional dialogue between a visitor and a museum guard-performer, based on live performance at Zadkine Museum, Paris (Fr)

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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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​​​​Credits

Copyright: Katya Ev