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    Saturday February 13 and Sunday February 14

    OPENING OF THE VILLA VASSILIEFF

    Vernissage de l’exposition "Groupe Mobile" lors du week-end inaugural de la Villa Vassilieff, samedi 13 et dimanche 14 février 2016. Image : Villa Vassilieff.
    Opening of the « Groupe Mobile » exhibition during the inaugural week-end of Villa Vassilieff, on the 13th and 14th of February 2016. Image: Villa Vassilieff.
    Opening of the « Groupe Mobile » exhibition during the inaugural week-end of Villa Vassilieff, on the 13th and 14th of February 2016. Image: Villa Vassilieff.
    Opening of the « Groupe Mobile » exhibition during the inaugural week-end of Villa Vassilieff, on the 13th and 14th of February 2016. Image: Villa Vassilieff.
    Opening of the « Groupe Mobile » exhibition during the inaugural week-end of Villa Vassilieff, on the 13th and 14th of February 2016. Image: Villa Vassilieff.
    Opening of the « Groupe Mobile » exhibition during the inaugural week-end of Villa Vassilieff, on the 13th and 14th of February 2016. Image: Villa Vassilieff.

    Tuesday February 16 from 7 p.m to 8.30 p.

    At Villa Vassilieff

    REDISCOVERING MARC VAUX FUNDS

    J.D. Kirszenbaum, Célébration de la Saint-Jean à São Paulo, 1952, FNAC 29874, Centre national des arts plastiques © all rights reserved / CNAP / photography: Yves Chenot.

    Conversation with Didier Schulmann (Curator, National Museum of Modern Art, Kandinsky Library), Nathan Diament (great nephew of J.D. Kirszenbaum, whose oeuvre was par­tially redis­cov­ered thanks to the Marc Vaux funds), Joanna Fiduccia (art his­­to­rian, spe­cialist of Giacometti), Julie Martin (co-author with Billy Klüver of the book Kiki et Montparnasse 1900-1930, pub­lished in 1989) and Ellie Armon Azoulay (asso­ciate researcher, Villa Vassilieff).

    Who was Marc Vaux ? The answer to this ques­tion varies with every visit to the funds, kept in the Centre Pompidou since the pho­tog­ra­pher passed away in 1971. At first, it appears as a spec­tac­ular, per­fectly struc­tured pile of thou­sands of card­board boxes, bearing family names — at times mis­spelled — for more than 6000 artists who were active in Paris between the early 20s and the end of the 60s, whose stu­dios Marc Vaux vis­ited to pho­tograph their works. This evening invites art his­to­rians, researchers and experts in the Marc Vaux funds to acti­vate some of the mate­rials pre­sented in the Groupe Mobile exhi­bi­tion and draw the paths of mut­li­ples sto­ries that can be found in the mar­gins of its pho­tographs.

    Saturday February 20 from 4 p.m to 8 p.m

    At Villa Vassilieff

    SLAUGHTER IN CINEMA
    Carte Blanche to Clark House Initiative

    Sawangwongse Yanghwe, "Bhupen Dream", 2016, ink & Watercolour on Paper.

    Tyeb Mehta’s depic­tion of the abat­toir in an India just inde­pen­dent, and Georges Franju’s com­mence­ment of the Nouvelle Vague with Le Sang Des Bêtes are some­where brought together in the voyeurism and de-human­iza­tion of Cristiana de Marchi’s per­for­mance in an Emirati slaugh­ter­house for sheep. They become the plot for a con­ver­sa­tion between Yogesh Barve and Kemi Bassene (artists pre­sented in the Groupe Mobile exhi­bi­tion), Caecilia Tripp, Aurélien Mole, Eric Stephany (artists) and Sumesh Sharma (member of Clark House Initiative and asso­ciate curator to Groupe Mobile). They res­onate with Laurent Brégeat’s inter­views of Indian mod­ernists such as Krishna Reddy. In its depic­tion and inter­dic­tion, beef becomes the con­text of a con­ver­sa­tion on expres­sion and imag­i­na­tion.

    Saturday June 4, 4 p.m

    At Villa Vassilieff

    PERFORMANCE - Wedding Revelry / Rivalry
    Amol K. Patil and Naresh Kumar

    Drawing for Naresh Kumar’s performance, 2016.

    Lathi-Khati, Amol K. Patil, 15 min

    Amol K. Patil per­forms Lathi-Kathi, a form of mar­tial dance pop­ular in wed­dings in the Western State of Maharashtra, where a man per­forms with a twig. Before British colo­nial rule, the Lathi-Kathi was mar­tial form used in wars, yet alongside the expan­sion of sophis­ti­cated forms of war and colo­nial restric­tion, the dance soon was con­verted into a cul­tural form of dance employed for enter­tain­ment at reli­gious events. Amol K. Patil and his family trav­elled across the state of Maharashtra to per­form these dances at wed­dings where they were invited to enter­tain the guests.

    His com­mu­nity in India, the Dalits or better knows as Mahars, became the back­bone of the British Army and con­tributed to the city’s public ser­vices such as san­i­ta­tion and munic­ipal works. Nonetheless, they kept ele­ments of their cul­tural engage­ments in their social housing pro­jects and slums, which by the 1960s and 70s became a place for the avant-garde move­ment of the­atre, poetry and music against exclu­sion from society, due to the apartheid of their back­ground. They embedded the repub­lican under­standing of the cit­i­zen—based on the move­ment begun by Dr BR Ambedkar, the archi­tect of the Indian Constitution, which is an amal­ga­ma­tion of the French con­sti­tu­tion, British Laws, American Charter for Freedoms and the ideas of Equality, Fraternity and Liberty.

    Amol K. Patil’s grand­fa­ther ani­mated these ideas through his nomadic poet exis­tence, trav­el­ling to vil­lages spreading to the unlet­tered and illit­erate the ideals of the con­sti­tu­tion, which had been written to abolish those of his caste. His father was an avant-garde play­wright who wrote com­plex plays on the notion of immi­gra­tion and urban life in Bombay. Amol K. Patil as a visual artist who con­tinues a prac­tice that reflects on this par­tic­u­larity that arises out of iden­tity often ani­mated in archives, let­ters and his mother’s mem­o­ries about his father and grand­fa­ther into per­for­mances and objects that rather reflect on the pre­sent. Art and his prac­tice allow him to travel the world be part of exhi­bi­tions and con­test the dis­crim­i­na­tion of visas and acces­si­bility. By re-enacting Lathi-Kathi, he makes a per­for­mance con­tex­tu­al­ising his ability to travel, ref­er­encing the folk­loric per­cep­tion of his family’s move­ment around Maharashtra.

    « Lathi-Kathi », Amol K. Patil, performance for Wedding Revelry / Rivalry, ca. 15 min, June 4th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.
    « Lathi-Kathi », Amol K. Patil, performance for Wedding Revelry / Rivalry, ca. 15 min, June 4th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.

    Appetency, Naresh Kumar, 38 min

    Transgender issues and social class have had and con­tinue to have res­o­nances across the globe. Identity has been better defined in the post­modern world and was left ambiguous in the pre-colo­nial society and until recently in the vil­lages of India.

    For wed­dings in eastern India, specif­i­cally in the state of Bihar, a trans­gender or a man would dress as the bride and then dance to music with erotic over­tones. The dance was a form of edu­ca­tion to the newly wed to inform the role of sex in quo­tidian life. Launda, is lit­er­ally trans­lated as Young Boy or Young & Gay, was a dance per­formed by men who came from the lower socio-eco­nomic back­grounds. The aris­toc­racy and the bour­geoisie frowned upon artistic prac­tices, such as music and dance, as the society embedded Catholic prudish behaviour into its fold. With changing times and a pen­chant for aspi­ra­tional mod­ernism the Launda dance was done away with, replaced by a more misog­y­nist and objec­ti­fying alter­na­tive in Bollywood. Transgender and non-defined sex­u­ality that lay in the grey were out­side the def­i­ni­tions of a modern nuclear family.

    Bihar was one of the longest colonised states under British rule. Here, the British forced cul­ti­va­tors to grow Indigo and opium, cash crops that led to ter­rible famines. This lead to a great migra­tion to South Africa, Trinidad Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, Fiji and Jamaica, cre­ating the largest colo­nial dias­pora after those dis­placed by the slave trade. In remem­bering the act, Joseph Beuys allowed the idea of the shaman per­former to take on the role of the artist.

    Here, Naresh Kumar ref­er­ences this shaman per­former and employs Marcel Duchamp and John Cage’s exper­i­mental music in com­bi­na­tion with tra­di­tional Bihari music from the Caribbean, where the prac­tice of the Launda dance has per­sisted as nos­talgic act to per­form, in ode to con­cep­tual per­for­mance and its role in democ­ra­tizing art. Naresh Kumar is inter­ested in exam­ining how travel and immi­gra­tion find hybrid cen­tres of authen­ticity and how we expe­ri­ence them in the con­tem­po­raneity through ref­er­encing moder­nity, pre-colo­nial and colo­nial tra­jec­to­ries.

    « Appetency » Naresh Kumar, performance for Wedding Revelry / Rivalry, ca. 38 min, June 4th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.
    « Appetency » Naresh Kumar, performance for Wedding Revelry / Rivalry, ca. 38 min, June 4th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.
    « Appetency » Naresh Kumar, performance for Wedding Revelry / Rivalry, ca. 38 min, June 4th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.

    Saturday June 11 from 11am to 12:30am

    THE SENTIENT BODY : SLIVER AND SPLIT
    Discussion and meeting with artist Sonia Khurana, cur­rently on show in the exhi­bi­tion Groupe Mobile.

    The treat­ment of the body in the domain of art and in the world has been and con­tinues to be a con­tentious issue, raising ques­tions of cul­tural frag­men­ta­tion, the cir­cu­la­tion of the imag­ined and phys­ical body and the inter­change­ability of per­cep­tions. By putting these ques­tions into prac­tice, the per­for­ma­tive video and pho­to­graphic art­work of Sonia Khurana, whose piece Bird is cur­rently on show at Villa Vassilieff, insti­gates a the­o­ret­ical and prac­tical enquiry into mod­ernist, fem­i­nist and cul­tural dis­courses. The ques­tions and enquiries Khurana brings to her work acts as a prompt for the viewer to prob­lema­tize a def­i­ni­tion of ‘the body,’ its mate­ri­ality and to ques­tion pre­cisely the def­i­ni­tion of the sen­tient body. Khurana inter­ro­gates and dis-mem­bers the canon­ical Eurocentric gaze of the body, through ref­er­ences to high Modernists castes such as Brancusi, only to reassemble cer­tain frag­ments and high­light the inter­woven nature of the self and other. In doing so Khurana traces the tra­jec­tory of the body throughout his­tory and decen­ters the Eurocentric gaze to fore­ground alter­na­tive sub­jec­tiv­i­ties.

    For this ses­sion Khurana will be dis­cussing her work Head-Hand:
    "The two body parts, the head and the hand, the pri­mary sites of social inter­ac­tion, meet in an inti­mate encounter. Their dif­fer­ences become spaces of encounter; spaces of com­mu­nality and trans­mis­sion, affec­tion, trust and attach­ment nei­ther in spite of nor because of dif­fer­ence, but rather pre­cisely through their dif­fer­ence. Khurana thus addresses iden­tity pol­i­tics here as a work of con­nec­tions, rather than decon­struc­tions, as an expe­di­tion into reflec­tions, rather than diffrac­tions." [Excerpt from essay: Body, rela­tion and reciprocity: Artworks by Sonia Khurana by Elena Trivelli and Leon Wainwright, 2015.]

    Sonia Khurana will also take part in the sem­inar Crossing divi­sion lines. Transnational fem­i­nism and cul­tural studies orga­nized by the research group Travelling Féministe of the Centre audio­vi­suel Simone de Beauvoir and Espace Khiasma, on Friday June 10 at Espace Khiasma. More infor­ma­tion here.

    Rencontre avec Sonia Khurana, dans le cadre de The Sentient Body: Silver and Split, 11 Juin 2016, Villa Vassilieff.
    Conversation with Sonia Khurana, as part of The Sentient Body: Silver and Split, June 11th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.

    From 2 p.m to 6.30 p.m

    LOOKING FOR POWER : BUDDHA IMAGES, A CAMBODIAN CASE STUDY

    Workhop and meeting with Erin Gleeson (art his­to­rian, director of Sa Sa Bassac, Cambodia).

    This work­shop will revolve around the figure of a dis­mem­bered Buddha, held at the Guimet Museum in Paris, a figure which embodies a series of issues related to the con­sti­tu­tion of ethno­graphic col­lec­tions, the con­struc­tion of a euro-cen­tric view of their objects and colo­nial muse­ology devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­larly in Southeast Asia. It will begin with a visit to the Musée Guimet.

    "The move from ani­conic to anthro­po­mor­phic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Buddha is yoked to changing notions of alive­ness, mul­ti­plicity, inter­change­ability, and like­ness or trace, among others. Using exam­ples of whole and frag­mented “Bud­dhist” stat­uary belonging to Cambodian his­tory past and pre­sent, we will review select sec­ular, reli­gious, ani­mate and inan­i­mate methods of pro­duc­tion and cura­to­rial treat­ment. Throughout, we will con­sider our options of inter­ac­tion and rela­tion with this imagery, noting the act of looking itself and its links with lever­aging power." - Erin Gleeson.

    This event takes part in the wor­shop and meeting pro­gram Between the cards orga­nized by Villa Vassilieff in part­ner­ship with Collège d’Etudes Mondiales at Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and with the sup­port of Pernod Ricard (Pernod Ricard Fellowship) and of Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques. In part­ner­ship with Espace Khiasma.

    Saturday June 18 from 5pm to 7 pm

    At Villa Vassilieff

    MEDITATIONS : read­ings of Jean Bhownagary’ poetry
    With Janine Bharucha and Sarah Petronio .

    Jean Bhownagary was at once film pro­ducer, potter, engraver and poet, a Jack-of-all-trades who melt artistic genres in his parisian apart­ment where he lives since the early 1950’s. Known for his great hos­pi­tality, he hosted young indian artists coming as stu­dents in Paris, receiving them for a laundry, a coffee or even for babysit his girls.

    It’s will be to the gen­erosity and the poetry of a man who tell another his­tory of the cos­mopolitan Paris that Janine Bharucha and Sarah Petronio pay tribute with this poetry reading Saturday June 18th at 5pm.

    As part of the fes­tival Quinze Cent Coups.

    View of Jean Bhownagary’s poems book, courtesy of Janine and Asha Bharucha collection. Image : Villa Vasilieff.
    Reading by Janine Bharucha and Sarah Petronio, as part of MEDITATIONS : lecture des poèmes de Jean Bhownagary June 18th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.
    Reading by Janine Bharucha and Sarah Petronio, as part of MEDITATIONS : lecture des poèmes de Jean Bhownagary June 18th 2016, Villa Vassilieff.