Naked Presence

This is not art. This is presence.

“Today there is no longer any “ontological” difference between making art and displaying art. In the context of contemporary art, to make art is to show things as art.” (Boris Groys, Politics of Installation, e-flux journal #2, 01/2009) The gallery performance Naked Presence is an installation of live presence in the context of an exhibition entitled Real Presence, which presents works in which the artists explicitly refer to the work of Marcel Broodthaers. The gallery space is used as a setting for the installation of five solo performances. Although nudity is the common denominator of all the performances, this is not about nudity as an aesthetic representation of the body, but about nudity as a mask of presence that needs to be unmasked in order to access the naked presence. Each performance of Naked Presence is therefore also a process of creating an artefact, which the performers display as a trace/residue of their presence before they leave the stage. When Broodthaers presented his installation Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1970, he placed a sign next to each object reading “This is not a work of art”. With Naked Presence we add: “This is not a work of art. This is work of presence.”

Naked Presence

2010 • Via Nova
Collective presentation • 210 min

Performances
— Extract Mandić
— Pure Performance
— Viva Mandić
— Spotlight on Me
— Interview With the Artist

Concept and direction — Bojan Jablanovec
Performers — Marko Mandić, Jaka Lah, Barbara Kukovec, Kristian Al Droubi, Christoph Rech
Installation guide — Katarina Stegnar
Technical manager — Igor Remeta
Producer — Špela Trošt
Production — Via Negativa, FFT Düsseldorf
Partner — Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

Presentation
19-11-2010, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf