MONIKA WEISS: PERFORMANCE DRAWING & KEYNOTE LECTURE
DESENHO, PERFORMANCE, VÍDEO E COMPOSIÇÃO SONORA
31 DE MAIO, MUSEU DA FACULDADE DE BELAS ARTES UP, 14h00
ÀS 18H00: CONVERSA INFORMAL COM A ARTISTA
PERFORMING DRAWING — PERFORMING LAMENT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN
KEYNOTE LECTURE
1 DE JUNHO, FACULDADE DE ARQUITETURA DA UP, 9h45
Organização: Núcleo de Investigação em Desenho, I2ADS
Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto
Monika Weiss’ Anamnesis II is a site-specific, ephemeral installation that includes public performance, projected video and sound composition.
As a systematic inquiry into the relationships between history, public space and the space around the body, the work addresses the performative act of drawing as related to speech, trace, erasure and disappearance. It is part of a series of performative installations like Drawing Lethe (2006) and Shrouds (2012), which evoke ancient rituals of lamentation as traditionally performed in response to war.
Her current work considers aspects of public memory and amnesia as reflected within the physical and political space of the City. Originally educated as a classical musician, the artist continues to compose sound environments for her installations and cinematic works. Weiss is renowned for the use of her own body as a vehicle of artistic expression and for incorporating historical documents and narratives within her works.
“Performing Drawing—Performing Lament in Public Domain” is an artist lecture by Monika Weiss on the nature of drawing as a performative language sited within the space of historical memory and contemporary urban landscape. Monika Weiss proposes that both ancient forms of expression—drawing and lamentation—share complex relationships with the notions of trace, history and postmemory. In this work Weiss suggests how collective mourning, including for the loss of purported enemies can also become a powerful political tool in opposition to the heroic masculine narratives of conquest and power. By enacting ancient gestures of lamentation, Weiss’ work also considers contemporary contexts of apathy, indifference, invisibility, and historical amnesia within the public forum and polis.