Mark Geffriaud: Tes mais
Solo show
gb agency, Paris
April 29 - June 16, 2023
DATES OF PERFORMANCES:
May 14, 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm - Performance by Aapo Nikkanen, May 14th
May 20, 7 pm - Performance by Charly Bechaimont and Guillaume Clausse, No animals were harmed
May 26 (closed to the public) - Géraldine Longueville, Thomas Schmahl, Maia Fastinger and Ange Petit
June 1, 7 pm to midnight - igni, Nous tournoyons dans la nuit et nous voilà consumés par le feu (After Iris Clert), a proposal by Florent Frizet, with works by Andrius Arutiunian, Konstantinos Giotis, Katerina Komianou, Chloé Royer, Éric Stephany, Iris Touliatou and Paky Vlassopoulou
June 3, 9 pm - Concert by Benjamin Seror, (60 min)
June 4, 6 pm -11 pm - The night of jealousy, a radio proposal by Carla Adra and Liza Maignan,
with Nora Barbier, Gwendal Coulon, Lou Ferrand, Jules Lagrange, Romain Noël, Mulov and free participation of public
(6 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm, 9 pm) Only with reservation: gb@gbagency.fr
In collaboration with Radio Duuu.
June 8, 9 pm - Concert by Thomas Schmahl (45 min), free entrance
June 9, 8 pm - Performance by Thomas Schmahl and Adrien Tinchi, no gallery for old men, (Part I), (30 min) free entrance
June 10, 9 am - Performance by Thomas Schmahl and Adrien Tinchi no gallery for old men, (Part II), (30 min), free entrance
June 10, 6 pm - 9:30 pm, La Situation, performance by Géraldine Longueville, each 30 min, free entrance
June 10, 10 pm - Diner Tes Mets by Sébastien Pluot, 15 euros, only by reservation
Reservations are strongly encouraged: gb@gbagency.fr
- As part of Paris Gallery Weekend 2023, Mark Geffriaud will present a performance conceived as a sequence of camera movements, a visit to the gallery at dusk, outside of working and exhibition hours.
May 25, 8 pm - Mark Geffriaud
May 26, 8 pm - Mark Geffriaud
May 27, 8 pm - Mark Geffriaud
In derivation — a visitor’s guide to be sung to oneself in one’s head, or otherwise not too loudly, while moving around the exhibition. Melodies will be suggested along the way, but each visitor will be able to pick out the songs one likes.
Now that, after having crossed the threshold of the gallery, while climbing the few steps of the entrance I put my perceptions in order - light intensity adjustment, space-time configuration… (1) - I say Hello, hello, hello (to be sung if possible in a louder tone to Marisol, Nasim, Solene… who are installed at the reception desk (2)), immediately I am face to face with un truc qui fait masse (l’courant peut plus passer). Composed of black stripes with ink or empty space, I don’t know yet, anyway, a poster is indeed blocking my way where usually there is a passage to another room, and leads me to think: hum, this exhibition is closed when it is open - hypothesis that provokes a short-circuit in one of the temporal lobes of my brain, or approximately speaking puts me in the ear (rings a bell), I imagine that conversely the exhibition is open when it is closed. Like a branch circuit.
On that note, my inner compass advises me to go towards other optical curiosities, reflective ones, though not completely, they have the strangeness of one-way mirrors. I see blurry. Sometimes fragments of images of a familiar nature appear to me - but are there images that are not familiar to us today? - Sometimes snippets of texts without any message, sometimes me, or rather my reflection dissolved in the silver nitrate that covers the surfaces, “delicious paintings, where the grey nevertheless dominates”, as it is written in precursory Magnetic Fields. Vertical Narcissus, I meditate as long as it takes.
A strange light ends up distracting me, a little blue, a little white, a little red, an impression of “déjà vu” ( a matrixian bug? “a memory of the present”(3)?) I thought I guessed on the side a projection of BFM TV, and with it the political news of the Days of May (Boum badaboum badaboum bam bam) 2023. I’m really starting to wonder if I am where I think I am.
To be certain, I return to the reception counter, as the bulb of a small lamp lit on the desk goes out. And then it immediately turns back on. That I am sure of. It went TILT, in the blink of an eye, as if it had addressed me, as if it had answered me that at that very moment, I had been intensely in the present. (4)
The gallery owner smiles at me: - would you like a receipt?
Next to us, small rolls of thin paper are ready to be printed, with a text or images of your choice. Why not. Let’s press the button: OK. The paper starts to come out, to the rhythm of the little machine’s song. Cric/wuuu-euuuuuuuuuu/tchic/tchic/ksssss. Then a space-time bubble opens up and transports me far, far away. The sound of rodents’ footsteps on twigs, of birds’ wings in foliage replaces that of the printer. I am in the middle of a forest, surrounded by foxes, weasels and wildcats.(5) Did such a forest exist before now? Or will it exist later? The arrow of time swings in all directions. For “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures,” or so it seems.(6)
But let’s talk about it. I’ve been to this gallery several times before. There is a large room behind the space I am in. A room opened in 2018.(7) Not before. The gallery used to be like now.(8) The before and after are in tension. At least, it seems to me. This is my version of the exhibition,(9) among other versions from other experiences. Notably those lived by the people who will come back once the gallery is closed, plunged in darkness. There will be just the little lamp that, like a vigil, will still blink for many presents and then, maybe, whispers in the vicinity… Tell me where did you sleep last night? - At the gallery (Unplugged).
I have a feeling I’ll know a lot more in the coming days.(10)
1.In an interview with Aude Launay published in 02 magazine in 2017, Mark explains his interest in the threshold effect: “It has been demonstrated that every time we walk through a door, our brain performs a kind of refreshing: it stores some of the information we had in our head and evacuates others, to make room and make ourselves more available to the new environment we are about to enter.” Entering each of his exhibitions is a way of experiencing this threshold effect.
2.The song where the Beatles repeat at the top of their lungs this same Hello, hello, hello (and admittedly also Goodbye) having been at the heart of a performance of Mark, composed of a sequence of moments (singing, readings, light interruptions, drum solo…) at the Silencio, in Paris, in 2014, in principle the gallery owners should not be surprised if you hum it to them…
3. Déjà vu and the End of History is the title of one of the books of the Italian philosopher Paolo Virno, theorist of the “déjà vu” in the context of a reflection on the richness of the power in relation to the act (in a revival of the Aristotelian terminology), which is an important reference for Mark.
4.The micro break in the power supply of the lamp evokes the functioning of the part of the brain that incessantly “updates” the memory and can therefore be considered as the organ through which we live the present (in its transience).
5. Each edition is sold for 200 euros, which are donated to ASPAS, an association that protects wild animals and their environment. One of their actions consists in buying back parcels of forest in order to free them forever from human exploitation.
https://www.aspas-nature.org/
https://aspas-reserves-vie-sauvage.org/
6.The work of Jorge Luis Borges is very present in Mark’s work. One can think of the performance by two simultaneous readers of the essay entitled A New Refuration of Time, written by the Argentinean author in two slightly different versions in 1944 and 1946. More globally, one can also think of the author’s Fictions and the short story The Garden of Forking Paths in which time is a labyrinth.
7.Mark’s exhibition A certain mildness too inaugurated the opening of this room. The gesture of closing it is therefore a way of travelling into the past, but which, beyond the convocation of the imagination, also underlines the extent to which the architecture and all the elements present on site are part of the exhibition insofar as they condition its form and its means.
8.This is not the first time Mark has played with the history of the gallery space. As a teaser for this exhibition, the 2022 installation entitled Je vois (I See), allowed the audience to choose between two different intensities of light, one cold which corresponds to the lighting used in the gallery in the past, the other warmer which corresponds to the current lighting.
9.The solitary reading of this guide was thought to echo a situation that Mark likes to work with: being alone while being in the midst of many, each one engaged in, focused on, or focused on an action simultaneously repeated by a multitude. This is for example what he orchestrated in the performance entitled The Tide, first realized in 2010. A group of people was invited to silently read a passage from Homer’s Odyssey. Thus each person, while reading a part of the work, was at the same time participating in the totality of the work with the others.
10.When the gallery is closed, the large room at the back is transformed into a production studio open to an ephemeral collective that sings, rehearses songs, records radio programs, or simply discusses and invents things that will emerge sooner or later.