Julien Bismuth — À propos — Slash Paris

Born in 1973, Julien Bismuth lives and works between New York and Paris. His mode of expression is diverse, from performance to theatre, from text to object, oscillating from written to oral forms and often combining them. His work alternates from minimalist plastic pieces to performances from which the only remnants are the process and objects left as traces and witnesses of the action. In L comme litote, for instance, four actresses recite the same monologue in six different manners, as objects, replicas of Richard Morris’ L-Beams, are rearranged on stage around them — both actresses and objects representing the effects of perspective after a change in orientation and presentation. Julien Bismuth’s work is an exploration and a reflexion on the conditions of existence and the operativeness of language. Some of his works directly apply concepts of linguistics to concrete situations as a means of comprehending their implications — such as Shifter (2010), inspired by a concept coined by Roman Jakobson designating words which refer to their own context of enunciation, such as “I” or “here”. The artist also tests the limits of language, for instance by having a ventriloquist recite a text by Karl Kraus, known for writing in fragments, in the performance In dieser grossen Zeit (2011). These actions also question language by using other means of expression, such as laughter, wait, silence and action more generally. He points at our automatisms and habits when using language and tries to elude them through art. In the end, Bismuth’s work is a constant and infinite dialogue between text, image, and object, a necessary dialogue to understand the realm of language.