The Human Board — CPIF — Centre photographique d’Ile-de-France — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 29 → December 21, 2012

With works by John Baldessari, Ulla von Brandenburg, Julien Crépieux, Joan Jonas, Joachim Koester, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Margaret Salmon and Joëlle Tuerlinckx at the CPIF, and João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva at the Parc culturel de Rentilly.

The exhibition The Human Board brings together a dozen films and videos forming part of the collection of FRAC Île-de-France. The two exhibition spaces — the CPIF at Pontault Combault and the Parc Culturel de Rentilly — will be plunged into darkness in order to make the projections visible. Visitors will meander through the penumbral setting encountering animated images, as if they were phantoms issuing from the void. Each film is perhaps the result of a sort of magic trick, of which the auteur-artists are providing us the illusory documentary. Stationary or moving human bodies haunt the images, circling or crossing the frame, moving in groups or in isolation, moving material or objects as if by magic… The Human Board is the name of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva’s film which I used to name this exhibition. Shot on 16mm and lasting forty-two seconds, we see the manipulation of a human body which is stiff as a plank. Another man lifts up the apparently lifeless body and places the head and feet on two chairs each held by two other characters. The chair which supports the head is sharply withdrawn and the ‘body-plank’ falls, bouncing on the ground.

Nothing further, a scene crudely shot, possibly a documentary, but one which has retained the mystery of fiction. Who are the protagonists? Is the cadaver-like aspect of the character a ruse? Is it living? Are we seeing a magic trick? Is it part of a filmed performance? This film helps provide a glimpse of the exhibition, the project of an ‘artist’ who for the moment has become ‘curator’.