Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth / Ludovic Burel et Ju Huyn Lee
Which bodies are we made of? From Foucault’s bio-power to Southern California’s industrialized bodies, both performances featured in this third installment in the Partitions (performances) cycle invite us to consider different ways to liberate the body.
Ludovic Burel and Ju Hyun Lee
After their residency in South Korea, Ludovic Burel and Ju Hyun Lee revisit the practice of karaoke in that country with “Pop & Political Korean Karaoke.” More specifically, the piece explores how a Korean population subject to very strong social pressures to conform may have found an outlet in karaoke.
Artist and publisher Ludovic Burel (readit.fr) and performing artist Ju Hyun Lee founded the research platform KVM (Korean Vitra Museum) in 2012. KVM focuses on the social critique of cultural and managerial design. Burel and Lee’s work has been presented in the form of installations-performances at the second edition of Celebration of the Body (Musée des moulages, Lyon; CAP, Saint-Fons); as performances-lectures (MC2, Grenoble; Raven Row Gallery, London; Artem, Nancy; Cité du design, Saint-Etienne; The Book Society, Seoul); and as workshops (D.U. Art, danse, performance, Besançon; ESBA, Angers; Kaywon Art School, Seoul). In 2012 the off-site program of the Institut français awarded them a grant to carry out research in South Korea.
Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth
Following up his research on the city of Los Angeles and the images it evokes, Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth proposes “Boys Beware,” a reading-performance that probes the founding myths of the industry of narrative structures, where the ghosts of Sharon Tate cross paths with those of the porn industry.
Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth’s work is the result of years of research mostly devoted to history, fiction and space, a collection of information in which new creations and archives from multiple sources coexist. From an understated portrait of Los Angeles as seen from its river to the contradictory cultural climate surrounding the opening of the New York World Fair, months after Kennedy’s assassination, Garait-Leavenworth tries, work after work, to draw the contours of his times through the ghosts of the past. His work has been presented at La Salle de Bain (Lyons), the IAC (Villeurbanne), Public Fiction (Los Angeles), the CAPC (Bordeaux) and Southard Reid (London). He is represented by the gallery Cortex Athletico.