OLIVIA JAQUES
“artistic research!
artistic research!
artistic research!”
#ARTS-BASED RESEARCH #BODY #COMMONS #PERFORMANCE
BIO.
Olivia Jaques is a Vienna-based artist&cultural worker. As her work spins around the relational, socio-political (feminist!) and the performative, most of her work is created in artistic collaborations. For 10 years+ she has been working together with Marlies Surtmann. Since 2017 they are and run the Performatorium – a laboratory for practice-oriented research of and through performative means. 2022 they have been granted the TQW Research Affiliation; 2023 they will continue their work within an INTRA artistic research project together with Charlotta Ruth. As part of a transdisciplinary artistic research team she is currently involved in a PEEK project at the University of Applied Arts.
24 hours with my curator (Klara Kiss ZIP Space) (2017)
Sitee-specific, process-based, situational art
I accepted the invitation of Angela Osterwalder/Sergio Araya, Milos Stolic and Francesca Brusa - the organisers, artists and curators of the project space Klara Kiss ZIP Space - to engage with the space. I wanted to do so in a process-oriented, discursive and performative way. The focus was on questions of (artistic) collaboration, working processes, the double role artist/organiser, authorship, all their associated boundaries, the socio-political framework of artistic production and labor conditions in and with project spaces."24 hours with my curator" consisted of an offer to the organisers, to give them my time: Each of them could benefit from 24 hours of undivided attention. Brusa accepted immediately, Osterwalder/Araya declined after much deliberation, Stolic hesitated and asked for 12 hours instead. During this time I set for myself: no phone, computer, headphones or appointments. Like an empty vessel, I wanted to get involved in the encounter,which demands a lot from both sides.
Performatorium (2017- ongoing)
laboratory, performative interventions, artistic research
Performatorium is an artist duo (Olivia Jaques and Marlies Surtmann) as well as a laboratory for practice-oriented research of and through performative means. Performance art works with the body and is to be experienced and explored through performative methods, quasi in action. Another focus of the Performatorium is the interconnectedness of the local art scene in Vienna. As an indipendent, feminist, and supportive platform, the Performatorium offers space for joint experimentation, exchange and collective performative artistic research. Up to 2020, it offered space for joint experimentation and exchange as an indipendent, feminist* platform for performance. Currently the Performatorium explores the artistic realm as a laboratory by developing artistic performative research methods, activating and updating past performances.
Photo: © Olivia Jacques
The Performative in Times of the Flapping Wings and (so called) Social Distancing (2020) Performance / Workshop
This is not a performance & workshop on society and the collective body, on the movement of a swarm of bees, the intelligence of a school of fish: The experience of quarantine has changed our perspectives on gatherings and collectiveness, when caring has turned into a certain physical distance, even isolation. This is a workshop on collaboration with the inscribed experience of the regulations concerning COVID-19, when we have unlearned to shake hands, then have decided to shake hands nevertheless while feeling the resistance of insecurity. Still carrying the aftermath of the quarantine in our post-isolated body and still-isolated mind, we think of the butterfly flapping its wings, when something trivial as a cough or a mask becomes the slight imbalance which potentially leads to a huge final (global) variation in outcome, making us even more aware of the power of each body and each movement. In isolation, more than ever, we are reminded that movement is life and life is a process.