Julie Béna / Lidwine Prolonge
This fourth edition of Partitions (performances) presents two performances: Soir de Paris by Julie Béna and Archivolte by Lidwine Prolonge.
Lidwine Prolonge / Archivolte
Archivolte is a performance that interweaves a lecture with a hypnosis session, and prepares us for a “celebration of time”. Lidwine Prolonge’s work could be defined as an extrapolation of the present through a simultaneous interpolation of the future and past, a paradoxical and impossible dual movement between fiction and reality, to be conjugated in the “future conditional”. The artist invites us to take the time to look at both the near and distant future. “Watches are inaccurate as long as we are alive, useless once we have passed away, exact at the time of our death” [Les Montres infidèles, 2010]. In this vertigo of temporal reflection it is still possible to see what can be done here and now. (Marie Bechetoille)
Lidwine Prolonge graduated from Marc Bloch University in 2003 and from the École supérieure des arts décoratifs de Strasbourg (now the HEAR) in 2005. From 2013 to 2016, she took part in the 5/7 research program at Villa Arson in Nice. She has been teaching at the HEAR in Strasbourg since 2013, and runs Bureau d’Anna, a company she founded in 2009. Her works have been shown at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain in Strasbourg, Triangle (Marseille), Interface (Dijon), Galerie Eva Meyer (Paris) and Villa Arson (Nice). They can also be found in private and public collections (FRAC Champagne-Ardenne). In 2008, she created an adaptation of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf at ENSA Dijon, by invitation of the FRAC Bourgogne. In 2014, In extenso and La Permanence (Clermont-Ferrand) presented the project 2064 cent ans plus tard, revolving around science fiction. She also works with theater (Anne-Laure Lemaire, Simone) and opera. In 2013, Ludovic Lagarde invited her to direct the video of La Voix humaine at the Opéra-Comique, then Israel In Egypt in 2017 at the Opéra de Reims. Her performances have been presented in various contexts: public space, a train station, art schools (Bourges, Clermont-Ferrand, Villa Arson), residencies (Suddenly, Last Summer and Cabaret Hors Champ), an art center (CAC Brétigny), the European Commission (Brussels) and the Actoral festival. Qui a mangé Virginia Woolf?, her first monograph, was published in 2010 by BlackJack éditions, and Something Must Be Wrong was published by Villa Arson in Nice in 2015. In 2018, she will take part in the exhibition Performance TV at the MABA in Nogent-sur-Marne (31 May – 22 July), curated by Mathilde Roman, alongside artists Esther Ferrer, Cally Spooner, Anna Byskov, Laure Prouvost, Hélène Delprat and Tacita Dean.
More about Lidwine Prolonge’s work here.
Julie Béna / Soir de Paris
Julie Béna’s work oscillates between performance, installation and theater. Proceeding through incongruities, shifts and displacements, Julie Béna diverts everyday images and objects. They gradually become the subjects of a variety of strange, poetic fictions. Through installation, photography, video or performance, the artist explores moments of transition, like the passage separating night from sundown. This tenuous balance reveals what is not seen at first glance, what is at play in a moment of waiting, what chance imperceptibly provokes. She is represented by Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris.
Julie Béna was born in 1982. She lives and works between Paris and Prague. She is a graduate of the Villa Arson in Nice and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She was recently nominated for the AWARE prize for women artists. Her latest exhibitions were held at the CAC Passerelle, Brest; Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris; Fused Space, San Francisco; and Mathew, NYC. In recent months, it has been possible to see her performances at M Leuven, ICA London and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In 2018, Béna has been invited to participate in the next Biennale de Rennes, and in the same month she will open her first solo show at Polansky Gallery, Czech Republic. Her next performances will take place at the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, at the MRAC Sérignan and at Independent in Brussels.
More about Julie Béna’s work here.