Akademia: Performing Life
With : (-)auteur, Mercedes Azpilicueta (Pernod Ricard Fellow 2017), Ieva Balode,
Yaïr Barelli, Aia Bertrand, Raymond Duncan, Ieva Epnere, Barbara Gaile,
Daiga Grantina, Myriam Lefkowitz, Mai-Thu Perret, Andrejs Strokins
Exhibition from 01.12 to 03.24.2018
Curated by Solvita Krese, Inga Lāce (Latvian Center for
Contemporary Art) & Camille Chenais
- Flyer of the exhibition
The Akademia, a community and a school that existed between the 1910s and 1970s in Paris, was created by Raymond Duncan and co-ran by Aia Bertrand. It aspired to create a new lifestyle synthesizing art, labour and movement. Through archives, contemporary artworks and artefacts produced by the Akademia, this exhibition will look at narratives and themes embodied by this school as potential alternatives to the established education models and
modes of creating and collective living, while also questionning the potential and risks of such communes easily turning towards eccentricity
and radicalism.
The exhibition
Akademia: Performing Life looks at narratives and themes springing from the Akademia, a community and school that offered courses in dance, art and crafts, hosted an art gallery, a publishing house and staged theatre and dance pieces between the 1910s and 1970s in Paris. Established by Raymond Duncan (1874-1966),American dancer and artist, and from the 1920s co-run by Aia Bertrand (1891 – 1977), a dancer, writer and expatriate from Latvia, the school was a manifestation of their ideological syncretism blending socialist principles, the desire to revive ancient Greece and a “natural” Latvian way of life. The exhibition seeks to explore the ideas embodied by Akademia as potential alternatives to established educational models, modes of creating and collective living. Equally, it acknowledges and critically details the potential risks that such utopian communes, that mindlessly follow the ideas of individual leaders, hold in shifting towards radicalism.
Focussed mainly on actions themselves – be they live art performances, gymnastics lessons or physical labour instead of contemplation, as expressed in the Raymond Duncan’s propagated philosophy called Actionalisme, activities of Akademia were never systematically documented; now presenting many riddles to its researchers. Except for its monthly journal New-Paris-York where Raymond Duncan’s views on art and society are most clearly manifested, the information comes together as a puzzle intertwining parts from the family archive in the US, stories of Duncan’s relatives and followers as well as material from libraries in Paris and Riga. Within the exhibition, archival research on Akademia is presented together with new or existing works by artists who have been invited to work with the legacy of Akademia, Aia Bertrand’s life as well as the themes of alternative education, self-sustainable living or the link between arts and crafts. In working with the legacy of Akademia, history becomes alive at the moment of its writing, weaving together not only facts but also interpretations, memories, suppositions and most importantly voices of contemporary artists.
Akademia, at least in its early years, held a visible, but often ambiguous position in the Parisian art ecosystem. Like many collective utopias of the beginning of the 20th century, Akademia was neither a place for living nor a school in a classical sense, but rather a community of various, frequently changing followers that gathered around
Raymond Duncan and his philosophy, involving themselves in activities like dance, music, debating, weaving or painting. Members of the community weaved their own garments and produced Greek-style leather sandals and silk scarfs for sale, an aspect Barbara Gaile traces through her dyed silks. Mercedes Azpilicueta’s work echoes the syncretic vision of art developed at the school with embroidered “scripts” which are starting points for the development of her performative work.
When he was 17, Raymond Duncan designed a theory of movement based on the economy of work and awareness of the body during labour. He developed a gymnastics method intended to prepare bodies for dance but also as a salvation tool for humanity. Over the course of four workshop sessions, Yaïr Barelli will work to reinvent and develop these early theories through physical practices, such as yoga and dance, in order to create a collective experience as well as a trace that could be called an « artwork ». In her work Equal Tense, Ieva Balode references dance practices that reflect on the ideas of cross-cultural, sexual and humanitarian equality. Promoting a healthy, simple life, a return to nature, a diffusion of art in everyday practices and a liberation from sexual and family norms, Raymond Duncan strongly opposed industrialization, capitalism and the bourgeois lifestyle and family, which according to him were the sources of the dehumanization of modern life. In Green School, Ieva Epnere chooses to work on ideas of alternative education put forward through the example of a kindergarten (the Green School), that existed in the suburbs of Riga from 1900, whose pedagogical approach resonates with that of Akademia.
- Aia Bertrand with students at the Akademia, photographed by Raymond Duncan circa 1924. Courtesy : Duncan Collection
While Raymond Duncan’s larger-than-life character often stole the spotlight, the exhibition also highlights the many lives of Aia Bertrand, whose role has yet to be properly acknowledged. In addition to being a dancer, weaver, editor of Akademia publications, Bertrand managed the art gallery, the weekly concert series, the sandal production and often the theatre productions. She was also a link to the Latvian community in Paris; for a while, the Latvian embassy was even hosted in the building of the Akademia, giving it a role in cultural diplomacy. Highlighting the missing that often accompanies research, Myriam Lefkowitz draws thoughts on the life of Aia Bertrand through multiple hypnosis sessions, then uses the created narratives as starting points for a performance. In the meanwhile, in her sculpture Ink waves cobble bread, Daiga Grantina references Duncan’s quirky and unconventional public image and evokes the outline of the couple he formed with Bertrand. The use of deep black, the bread and curves are a nod to the ink of the letter press, the daily life and dance style of Akademia.
Akademia often hosted shows and philosophical debates on issues they considered topical to modern lifestyle or politically engaging. (-) auteur evokes the spirit of Akademia, an open house for radical creativity, by activating the exhibition space with performances. Andrejs Strokins works with vernacular photographs from the interwar and Soviet period in Latvia, looking for visual similarities with performances held at Akademia, inquiring into how different ideologies and political regimes can produce similar aesthetics.
As a counter-point to Akademia’s initial utopian promises, Mai-Thu Perret shows part of her ongoing project entitled The Crystal Frontier, which focuses on a utopian feminist community combining radical feminist politics with literature, craft and the avant-garde.
- Exhibition view of « Akademia: Performing Life », Villa Vassilieff, Paris, 2018.
Barbara Gaile, La Verticale, 2017 and photographs from the Duncan Collection.
Courtesy: Barbara Gaile and Duncan Collection
Image: Aurélien Mole
Akadémia: Perfoming Life is realized in collaboration with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga as part of the contemporary art and research project Portable Landscapes which examines the stories of exiled and emigré Latvian artists in Paris, New York, Sweden and Berlin, locating them within the broader context of 20th-century art history, and wider processes of migration and globalization. The exhibition will have its next iteration at the Latvian National Museum of Art in April-June, 2018.
Akadémia: Perfoming Life unfolds over two chapters at Villa Vassillief, Paris and Latvian National Museum of Art; the exhibition is coproduced by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research.
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