Marcella Lista on La Ribot: lecture at Beirut Art Center

Navigating images: La Ribot’s corps-opérateur


Wednesday 17 June 2015, 6:00 pm
 
About the event

Just as dance has widely entered museums spaces and agendas, to fulfill either experimental or spectacular performative formats, it has also merged with the film and video mediums into new genres, identified with recently coined terms such as Screendance or Dance with camera. La Ribot’s work rather defies categories. In choreographic pieces such as her long-term Piezas Distinguidas (1993-2000), or in installations like Walk the Chair (2010), her multifold practice passes through objects and their manipulation to address and provoke the very idea of dance. Video, thereby, takes part in a complex experiment when it comes to La Ribot’s work. Within her concept of corps-opérateur, far from serving as an eye-witness, the camera becomes a highly unstable component in the performance, both object and gaze. While the demystification of the (female) body is at the core of her work, her corporal approach to image-making also reaches a demystification of the image.
The lecture will include various excerpts of La Ribot and other artists’ works.

Biography
Marcella Lista is an art historian based in Paris, currently curator for contemporary art projects at the Musée du Louvre. Her research work deals with the transdisciplinary aspect of history of modernity, in particular with questions related to the interactions between visual and sound arts, dance, performance, new media, and the extended theories of abstraction. Her critical work in contemporary art is engaged in various topics, from conceptual dance and performance through post-photographic practices. She has curated various exhibitions, namely Sons & Lumières : une histoire du son dans l’art du XXe siècle (Centre Pompidou, 2004), Corps étrangers : danse, dessin, film (Louvre, 2006); Pierre Boulez. Œuvre : Fragment (Louvre, 2008), Paul Klee: Polyphonies (Musée de la Musique, Paris, 2011), Walid Raad/Preface to the First Edition (Louvre, 2013), Mark Lewis. Invention at the Louvre (Louvre, 2014). Since 2008, she curates an international performance program, «Openings», developed jointly by the Louvre and the FIAC. Among her last publications: «Xavier Le Roy: ‘a discipline of the unknown’», Afterall, London, n°33, Summer 2013; «Play Dead : Dance, Museums and the “Time-Based Arts”», Dance Research Journal, Cambridge, n°46/3, December 2014.

www.beirutartcenter.org