Alice Anderson: Body Disruptions

ALICE ANDERSON

BODY DISRUPTIONS

BODY DISRUPTIONS

ALICE ANDERSON

CONTENTS

Lost Gestures pages 6 – 15 Les Gestes Couleurs by Annabelle Gugnon pages 17 – 20 The Colour Gestures by Annabelle Gugnon translated by Ella Marder pages 21 – 24 Sound Paintings pages 26 – 35 Sun Drawings pages 36 – 47 Les Dessins Soleil by Annabelle Gugnon pages 49 – 51 Sun Drawings by Annabelle Gugnon translated by Ella Marder pages 53 – 55 Body Itineraries pages 58 – 71 Technologies of the Intangible by Max Carocci pages 73 – 77 Nuhé by Rose Lejeune pages 78 – 80 Nuhé pages 82 – 85

LOST GESTURES

8

There not exist sign, Lost Gestures performance, coloured pencils on paper, 2018

9

10

Sigma Sign, Lost Gestures performance, coloured pencils on paper, 2018

11

12

Dividing Sign from Computer Keyboard, Lost Gestures performance, coloured pencils on paper, 2018

13

14

Power Sign from Computer Keyboard, Lost Gestures performance, coloured pencils on paper, 2018

15

16

LES GESTES COULEURS

ANNABELLE GUGNON

L’artiste franco-britannique, Alice Anderson, donne à voir un temps nouveau de sa quête. Ses « gestes perdus » composent des dessins de couleurs vives. Ils forment une musique de traces.

Ils sont rythmés par la chorégraphie spontanée qu’engendre chacune des performances de l’artiste. Qu’elles se déroulent au secret de l’atelier ou en présence d’un public, ces performances ouvrent des infra-événements, des absences, des transes qui scandent, déroutent et réorientent le geste. Le perdent. Chaque micro-changement se manifeste par le remplacement d’une couleur au profit d’une autre et par le son du crayon caduc jeté dans un bol de cuivre rivé au sol. Ces performances se prolongent pendant toute une journée, parfois plusieurs jours de suite. L’endurance est la condition d’un transport hypnotique.

Ces gestes-couleurs sont la poursuite, sous une autre forme, des tissages au fil de cuivre. Dans les performances qui utilisent les crayons comme celles qui impliquent le fil, il s’agit toujours pour Anderson de tisser, de mémoriser le monde contemporain, ses objets comme ses pratiques, « [ses] bribes et [ses] morceaux, témoins fossiles de l’histoire [...] d’une société », comme l’a écrit l’anthropologue Claude Lévi-Strauss. 1 Les Lost Gestures mémorisent au crayon de couleur les signes typographiques digitaux ; ces points, ces mots-dièse, ces parenthèses, ces flèches, ces tirets ordonnés sur le clavier de l’ordinateur.

Ces signes président aux connections numériques et dématérialisées, les rendent possibles et les symbolisent.

17

Ils sont les indices d’un monde où l’intelligence artificielle, la nanotechnologie, la biotechnologie redéfinissent les logiques et les alliances de l’existence humaine.

A chaque performance, Anderson sélectionne un unique caractère typographique. Les couleurs viendront l’animer tout au long de la séquence, laquelle prend fin avec l’épuisement des nuances de la palette. Aussi chaque dessin détient-il un potentiel de couleurs similaires pour un tissage tout à fait différent. Mais tous seront nés d’un rythme s’accélérant jusqu’à arriver à son acmé, à une ivresse provoquée par la répétition comme ont pu l’être les lignes de « Je t’aime » de Louise Bourgeois (1994) ou ses pluies de flèches rouges sérigraphiées (« Untitled », 2002).

Toutefois, Anderson ne se trouve pas dans le champ du désir scandé mais cherche plutôt à se laisser parcourir par un flux, à la manière du peintre américain Cy Twombly réalisant ses écritures expressionnistes — par exemple, « Roman Notes 3 » (1970). Les deux artistes ont en commun de faire œuvre en se laissant traverser par le mystère de gestes flottants, sans forme préétablie. « Le geste, c’est la somme indéterminée et inépuisable des raisons, des pulsions, des paresses qui entourent l’acte d’une atmosphère », écrit Roland Barthes 2 à propos des tableaux de Cy Twombly. Car le geste est libre. Contrairement à l’acte, il ne veut rien produire, il existe, il s’accomplit, et, par conséquent, il libère. « Ces gestes répétés assouvissent mon besoin d’être en respiration, de vivre l’espace, de le prendre, dit Anderson. Dans les performances, je m’oublie moi-même, c’est une délivrance et c’est aussi une manière d’explorer l’inconnu. » 3 Son être s’anime de mouvements dont elle est le témoin à travers la couleur. D’ailleurs, elle est la première à s’étonner du résultat, à le découvrir comme un agencement venu de surcroît, à l’insu d’elle-même.

A regarder les linéarités enchevêtrées des mots-dièse, les turbulences des flèches démultipliées, les bonds harmonieux des parenthèses, il se passe là quelque chose de primal, pulsionnel, d’une disposition ancestrale venant activer la vie. Sans chercher à le savoir précisément, Anderson effectue à rebours — intuitivement — le chemin des humains qui, au profit d’expériences et de pensées, ont pu concevoir la notion même de rythme. En explorant les signes du monde digital, elle revient à la source de ce concept. Comme l’a montré le linguiste Emile Benveniste, « rien n’a été moins ‘naturel’ que cette élaboration lente [...] d’une notion qui nous semble si nécessairement inhérente aux formes articulées du mouvement. » 4

18

Le mot « rythme » ne s’est pas imposé par l’observation de la mer ou du fleuve. Le terme est passé par les atomes d’Héraclite et de Démocrite pour transiter par Platon écrivant : « L’harmonie est une consonance, la consonance un accord...

C’est de la même manière que le rythme résulte du rapide et du lent, d’abord opposés, puis accordés. » 5 Enfin, le rythme a atteint sa définition actuelle : « L’arrangement harmonieux des attitudes corporelles combiné avec un mètre. [...] On pourra alors parler d’une danse, d’une démarche, d’un chant [...] et tout ce qui suppose une activité continue décomposée par le mètre en temps alternés. » 6 Les Lost Gestures résultent d’une danse. Aux gestes et rythmes d’Anderson, répondent les improvisations de la danseuse contemporaine Ino Riga. Elle se met au diapason des mouvements de la plasticienne. La chorégraphie entre les deux femmes convoque des énergies premières, comme un ballet cosmique retissant un lien entre tous les vivants, ceux d’aujourd’hui et ceux de la nuit des temps.

La même question les a engagés à inventer, à créer, à découvrir : que veut dire exister ? Les réponses et les idéaux dessinent les horizons du futur. Les Lost Gestures activent cette interrogation en la précisant : que veut dire exister dans un monde digital et dématérialisé ? Anderson ne cherche pas de réponse immédiate mais expérimente l’ouverture de l’incertitude. Les énergies créatrices répondent. « Je me sens comme un matériau. Je me saisis du moindre signe et tout concorde. J’ai l’impression d’être là pour faire ce qui doit être fait », dit-elle. Ses performances la placent dans le monde et dans l’histoire. Elle se laisse traverser par un flux dont elle ignore l’origine et la destination.

Par sa spontanéité, le dessin est la technique la plus ajustée à cette situation. « Le dessin est énergie, a dit l’artiste Joseph Beuys.

Il est un élément dont la combustion transforme immédiatement les idées en représentations. » 7 Chez Anderson, cette alchimie, au diapason de l’ici et maintenant, est l’une des conditions des Lost Gestures. D’ailleurs, si une intensité de présence n’est pas au rendez-vous de la performance, la plasticienne ne conserve pas l’œuvre. Chacun des dessins doit être un témoignage vif sinon il n’a pas lieu d’être. C’est éthique. Pour elle, l’ici et maintenant est un gage d’authenticité, au sens où l’a établi Walter Benjamin : « A la plus parfaite reproduction, il manque toujours une chose : le hic et nunc de l’œuvre d’art — l’unicité de son existence au lieu où elle se trouve. Le hic et nunc de l’original constitue ce qu’on appelle son authenticité. » 8

19

Les performances des Lost Gestures chargent de présence corporelle des signes typographiques numériques, donc éthérés. Lorsque les ouvriers du livre les composaient encore au plomb, ces signes portaient l’empreinte de la projection du corps. D’ailleurs, le vocabulaire technique en est encore aujourd’hui tramé : on dit le « corps » de la lettre, « l’œil », la « tête » d’un caractère, sa « panse »...

Il ne s’agit toutefois pas pour Anderson d’associer artificiellement du corps à l’univers digital mais plutôt de « laisser parler les choses et le monde »9. C’est ainsi que John Cage définit le silence, un processus qui est l’inverse de la communication et ses discours préconçus. Le silence, en ne provoquant aucun carambolage d’intentions, se met à l’écoute de la vie telle qu’elle se propose au corps et aux sens.

Le silence est la condition sine qua non pour se mettre à l’écoute des hasards qui ourdissent les connections signifiantes. Il s’agit de toujours et encore retisser le monde et ses élans, ses espaces, ses libertés.

L’artiste Anderson y accorde sa vie.

1 Claude Lévi-Strauss, « La Pensée sauvage », in « Œuvres », éd. Gallimard, coll. La Pléiade, 2008.

2 Roland Barthes, « Cy Twombly », éd. Seuil, 2016.

3 Toutes les citations d’Alice Anderson sont le fruit d’un entretien réalisé avec l’artiste à Paris, le 24 octobre 2018.

4 Emile Benveniste, « Problèmes de linguistique générale », tome 1, éd. Gallimard, 1976.

5 Platon, « Le Banquet », 187b, in Emile Benveniste, op. cite.

6 Emile Benveniste, op. cite.

7 Lucrezia de Dominizio Durini, « Beuys Voice », éd. Mondadori Electa, 2011.

8 Walter Benjamin, « L’Œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique », éd. Allia, 2011.

9 John Cage, « Pour les oiseaux. Entretien avec Daniel Charles », 1970, éd. L’Herne, 2014.

20

THE COLOUR GESTURES

ANNABELLE GUGNON

The Franco-British artist, Alice Anderson, unveils a new phase in her quest. Her ‘lost gestures’ are composed of brightly coloured drawings.

They form a music of traces. They are punctuated by the spontaneous choreography conceived by each of the artist’s performances.

Whether or not they happen in the intimacy of the studio or before an audience, the performances give way to infra-events, absences and trances that break up, derail and re-orient the gesture, eventually losing it. Each micro-change is manifested by the replacement of one colour for the benefit of another, and by the sound of the obsolete pencil thrown into a copper bowl bolted to the floor. These performances last for a whole day, sometimes several days in a row. Endurance is the condition for a hypnotic passage.

These colour-gestures are a continued exploration of the copper-wire weavings in another form. In her performances, whether she uses pencils or wire, the aim is always to weave and remember our contemporary world – its objects as much as its practices: ‘[its] bits and [its] pieces as fossil witnesses to a society’s history,’ as the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote.1 The Lost Gestures memorise digital typographic signs using coloured pencils; the dots, the hashtags, the parentheses, the arrows, the dashes arranged on a computer keyboard. These signs preside over digital and dematerialised connections, making them possible and symbolising them. They are the clues of a world where artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies and biotechnologies are redefining the logic and alliances of human existence.

21

For each performance, Anderson selects a single typographic character.

Colours animate it throughout the sequence, which ends once the palette has been exhausted. Each drawing holds the same colours but ends with a completely different weaving. All drawings will however be born from a rhythm that keeps on accelerating until it reaches its peak, a repetition-induced intoxication – such as with the lines in Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Je t’aime’ (1994) or her rain of red silk-screened arrows in ‘Untitled’ (2002).

However, Anderson does not find herself in a field of chanted desire, but is rather looking to let herself be traversed by a flow, in the spirit of the American painter Cy Twombly and his expressionistic writings – for example ‘Roman Notes 3’ (1970). Both artists share this creative practice of letting themselves be influenced by the mystery of floating gestures, without any preconception. ‘Gesture is the indefinite and inexhaustible sum of reason, impulses and idleness that surround the act of an atmosphere,’ writes Roland Barthes about Cy Twombly’s painting.2 That is because the gesture is free. Unlike the action, it does not seek to produce anything, it simply exists, it self-realises and therefore liberates.

‘These repeated gestures appease my need to be breathing, to inhabit the space, to take it in possession,’ says Anderson.

‘During a performance, I forget about myself, which is a liberation and also a way to explore the unknown.’ 3 Her being comes alive with movements that she witnesses through colour. She is also the first one to be astonished by the result, discovering it in the form of an arrangement which occurred unbeknownst to herself.

Looking at the entangled linearity of the hashtags, the turbulence of the multiplied arrows, the harmonious leaps of parentheses, there is something primal and instinctual happening, something of an ancestral disposition coming to activate life. Without seeking to know specifically, Anderson intuitively goes backwards along the path of humans who, for the benefit of experiences and thoughts, were able to conceive the very notion of rhythm. By exploring the signs of the digital world, she reverts to the source of this concept.

As the linguist Emile Benveniste wrote, ‘nothing was less “natural” than this slow elaboration [...] of a notion that seems so intrinsically inherent to articulated forms of movement.’ 4 The word ‘rhythm’ was not born from observing the sea or a river.

The term went from Heraclitus and Democritus’ atoms to Plato’s writings: ‘Harmony is a consonance, consonance a chord… The same way, rhythm results from the fast and the slow, which are first in contradiction, then become compatible.’ 5 And finally, rhythm reached its current definition: ‘The harmonious arrangement of bodily attitudes combined with a metre.

22

[...] We can then speak of a dance, a walk, a song […] and all that involves a continuous activity broken down by the metre in alternate times.’ 6 The Lost Gestures arise from a dance, that of Ingo Riga’s improvisations when responding to Anderson’s gestures and rhythms. The contemporary dancer gets in tune with the artist’s movements, and raw energy emanates from their choreography – a cosmic ballet reweaving a tie between all the living, those of today and those of the mists of time.

The same question encouraged them to invent, to create, to discover – what does it mean to exist? The answers and ideals sketch the future’s horizons. Their Lost Gestures activate this questioning and specify it; what does it mean to exist in a digital and dematerialised world?

Anderson is not looking for immediate answers. She experiments with opening a door into uncertainty - the creative energies will respond.

‘I feel as if I were a material, I catch any sign and everything falls into place. I feel like I am exactly where I need to be to accomplish what must be accomplished,’ she says. Her performances position her in the world and in history. She lets herself be overtaken by a flux, of whose origin and destination she is unaware.

Drawing is the most fitting technique for the situation because of its spontaneous nature. ‘Drawing is energy, it is like fuel whose combustion is immediately resolved in ideas becoming objects,’ 7 said the artist Joseph Beuys. For Anderson, this alchemy, in tune with the here and now, is one of the conditions for the Lost Gestures. In fact, if she feels that the intensity of presence is not real enough during a given performance, she will discard the artwork. Every single drawing must be a lively testimony.

It is an ethical question. For her, the ‘here and now’ is proof of authenticity as Walter Benjamin established it: ‘Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art lacks one element: its presence in time and space – its unique existence at the place where it happens to be: the hic et nunc of the original work makes what one calls its authenticity.’ 8 The Lost Gestures performances embody digital typographical signs.

When typesetters were still composing books with lead, the signs carried the imprint of the body projection. In fact, the technical vocabulary remains influenced to this day – one says the ‘body’ of a font, the ‘eye’, the ‘head’ of a typeface, its ‘belly’… Anderson is not, however, looking to artificially plug some bodily matter to the digital world she explores, but rather to ‘let things and the world speak for themselves.’ 9 This is actually how John Cage defines silence, a process that is the opposite of communication and its preconceived discourses. Because it is devoid of piled up intentions, silence enables us to listen to life as it offers itself to our body and senses. Silence is the sine qua non condition to put oneself in the right frame of mind and be open 23

to perceive meaningful connections. It is always about re-weaving the world and its impulses, its spaces and its freedoms. It is what Alice Anderson dedicates her life to.

Translator’s note: all above quotes are personal translations from the following book excerpts.

1 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, University of Chicago Press, 1966 2 Roland Barthes, Cy Twombly, Merve Verlag, 1983 3 All quotes by Alice Anderson are taken from an interview with the artist, in Paris on 24 October 2018 4 Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, University of Miami Press, 1971 5 Plato, The Banquet of Plato, Nabu Press, 2010 6 Benveniste, op. cit.

7 Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, Beuys Voice, Kunsthaus Zürich, Electa, 2011 8 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Prism Key Press, 2010 9 John Cage, For the Birds. John Cage in conversation with Daniel Charles, Marion Boyars, 1981

24

25

SOUND PAINTINGS

26

27

28

Sound Painting, copper oil paint on paper, 2018

29

30

Sound Painting, copper oil paint on paper, 2018

31

32

Sound Painting, copper oil paint on paper, 2018

33

34

Sound Painting, copper oil paint on paper, 2018

35

SUN DRAWINGS

36

37

38

Sun Drawing, oil pencil on paper, 2017

39

40

41

42

Sun Drawing, oil pencil on paper, 2018 previous page: Sun Drawing, oil pencil on paper, 2018

43

44

Sun Drawing, oil pencil on paper, 2018

45

46

Sun Drawing, oil pencil on paper, 2018

47

48

LES DESSINS SOLEIL

ANNABELLE GUGNON

« Au diapason du monde et de l’univers, il se passe des choses extraordinaires. » 1 Ces mots d’Alice Anderson proviennent directement du soleil. Pas de l’astre pharaonique mais du soleil de tous les jours, celui dont les rayons s’amusent quotidiennement sur le sol de l’atelier.

Celui dont elle a enregistré les traces d’ombres et de lumières traversant le quadrillage des fenêtres orientées aux quatre points cardinaux, et donc baignées de clarté du matin au soir.

Conséquence probable du changement climatique, l’été de 2018 a été particulièrement ensoleillé à Londres. L’artiste a été sensible à cette luminosité peu commune. Elle s’est mise à relever, au crayon rouge sur page blanche, les lignes mouvantes des reflets du soleil à travers les vitres. De seconde en seconde, ces rayons ont produit des dessins à la fois ondoyants et géométriques.

Habituellement, la pratique d’Anderson est liée à la danse. Elle crée un environnement et une chorégraphie où se tissent et se mémorisent au fil cuivré le monde contemporain, ses objets et ses pratiques.

Elle performe aussi des rythmes au cours desquels s’élaborent des graphismes multicolores. Mais, cette fois, elle s’est mise exclusivement en position réceptive. Elle a laissé faire et a relevé les contours des mouvements de la lumière sur le sol, sans en modifier le cours.

Ces improvisations astrales ont produit des crêtes de segments, des translations de lignes, des incidences de facettes, des croisements de losanges et de carrés mais aussi des espaces vides quand les nuages, au gré de leurs métamorphoses, gommaient les faisceaux d’ondes.

49

Cette attitude réceptive fait penser à l’invitation de Paul Cézanne: « Toute la volonté [du peintre] doit être silence. Il doit faire taire en lui toutes les voix des préjugés, oublier, oublier, faire silence, être un écho parfait... Alors sur sa plaque sensible, tout le paysage s’inscrira. » 2 Dans l’atelier d’Anderson, ce paysage est composé de figures qui se déplacent vite, très vite. « Ma course est effrénée pour saisir les lignes éphémères du soleil. Le temps que je trace un trait et tout à déjà pris une autre forme. Mais cela en vaut la peine car le dialogue est intense », dit-elle.

Cette frénésie pour relever les formes ouvre, paradoxalement, un espace lent et méditatif. Comme une réflexion cosmique où les reflets sont des visions que le soleil se fait de lui-même. Il faut rappeler que la lumière n’est visible que si elle rencontre un objet. « Dans l’espace vide, un astronaute ne verra qu’un noir d’encre même s’il est baigné de lumière solaire » 3, enseigne Trinh Xuan Thuan, prix Nobel d’astrophysique.

En interceptant le trajet des ondes, les fenêtres de l’atelier, le sol ainsi que les feuilles de papier constituent donc des révélateurs. En quelque sorte, sans eux, la lumière ne se verrait pas mais, inversement, sans la lumière eux-mêmes resteraient invisibles : cette symbiose fait exister le monde.

Depuis les temps les plus reculés, les humains ont été les explorateurs de la lumière. En arpentant le soleil, Anderson rejoint leurs pas. Elle se rapproche des premiers relevés de mouvements solaires. Il en existe une multitude... Il y a, par exemple, les gravures rupestres du Val Camonica, en Italie, il y a le disque rayonnant porté par l’Egyptien Toum, il y a le portail de pierres de Stonehenge, au Sud de l’Angleterre. Erigés il y a quarante siècles, à l’Age du Bronze, ces dolmens et menhirs construisent une immense horloge cosmique indiquant la course du soleil pendant l’année.

Les progrès de la connaissance scientifique ne retirent rien au pouvoir symbolique du soleil, à sa poésie, à son mystère.

On sait que la quantité d’énergie libérée par l’astre solaire à chaque réaction nucléaire ne pourrait même pas alimenter une petite lampe électrique. Ce qui le fait briller sont les centaines de milliards de milliards de milliards (10 38) de réactions qui se déroulent chaque seconde en son cœur. Toutefois ces données objectives n’entament pas sa puissance cosmique, propice à enflammer l’imagination et à susciter la création.

Le soleil continue d’inscrire ses mythologies dans le monde contemporain. Quels messages détiennent Les dessins soleil d’Anderson ? Comme des oracles, ils ne cèlent ni ne décèlent mais font signe. A chacun de se les approprier, de les explorer, de les interpréter. Ces lignes rouges semblent provenir de l’origine 50

de la graphie, quand écriture et dessin parlaient d’une seule voix.

Elles détiennent les traces de la puissance de la lumière, qui, depuis toujours, dépasse les humains et leur donne le désir d’exprimer l’énigme et la beauté du monde. C’est là que Les dessins soleil prennent source.

Ils relèvent le parcours de la lumière et conjuguent sa poésie comme une ligne imaginaire dessine une constellation en reliant plusieurs étoiles.

Anderson n’est pas seule dans cette fascination pour l’astre solaire.

Elle est entourée de nombreux créateurs. Tous, à leur manière, entretiennent avec lui un dialogue nourri.

Alexander Calder a été propulsé dans la création artistique, un jour de 1922, en voyant, d’un côté, le soleil se lever, quand, de l’autre côté, la lune descendait, blanche, morte. 4 Il repeignait son bateau au bord de la mer des Caraïbes et cet événement a été pour lui la révélation de la présence de l’univers.

Richard Long, le land-artiste, a enregistré quant à lui une « Marche vers une éclipse solaire ». 5 En 1999, il est parti de Stonehenge pour parcourir 380 kilomètres et arriver au sommet d’une colline au moment de l’éclipse du soleil. Une magie de matin du monde...

La Cubaine Ana Mendieta a fait corps avec la nature pour se confronter au temps par les couches primordiales de terre, d’eau, de lumière qui animent le réel.

Le soleil inspire aux humains une relation archaïque avec l’univers.

Il invite à renouer un lien vif avec la nature, à retrouver des attaches essentielles car elles engagent la possibilité même de l’existence.

Pourtant, la distance engendrée par les pratiques digitales et numériques met à mal cette relation fondamentale.

Les dessins d’Anderson sont une méditation. Ils recréent une proximité cosmique à l’intérieur de l’atelier. Ils offrent à la lumière les révélations d’un séjour terrestre. Ils sont une manière sensible de prendre la mesure de l’infini et, par ce fait, d’accroître la profondeur de l’existence.

1 Toutes les citations d’Alice Anderson sont le fruit d’un entretien réalisé avec l’artiste le 21 novembre 2018 2 Joachim Gasquet, « Cézanne », éd. Encre Marine, 2002 3 Trinh Xuan Thuan, « Le Chaos et l’Harmonie », éd. Gallimard, coll. Folio, 2000 4 Maurice Bruzeau, Alexandre Calder, Jacques Masson, « Calder à Saché », éd. Cercle d’Art, 1978 5 « Walking to a Solar Eclipse–Starting from Stonehenge, A Walk of 235 Miles, Ending on a Cornish Hilltop, At a Total Eclipse of the Sun », 1999, Richard Long: Walking the Line, Thames and Hudson, 2005

51

52

SUN DRAWINGS

ANNABELLE GUGNON

‘When the world and the universe are in tune, extraordinary things happen.’ 1 These words from Alice Anderson come straight from the sun. Not the Pharaonic star, but the everyday sun, whose rays play on the studio floor daily. Anderson records the traces of light and shadow crossing the windows – windows in all directions, bathed in light from morning to evening.

As a probable result of climate change, the summer of 2018 was a particularly sunny one in London. The artist was aware of the unusual brightness. She began to sketch the moving lines of sunlight, entering through the window panes, on a white page with a red pencil.

From one second to the next, these rays produced drawings both rippling and geometric.

Usually, Anderson’s practice is related to dance. She creates an environment and a choreography where the contemporary world, with its objects and practices, is woven together and memorised with copper wire. She also performs rhythms leading to multicoloured graphics. However, this time, she put herself exclusively in a position of receiving. She let the phenomenon happen and only recorded the outlines of the light movements on the floor, without changing their course.

These astral improvisations produced segment ridges, translations of lines, facet incidences, intersections of rhombuses and squares, but also empty spaces when clouds, according to their metamorphoses, erased the light waves.

53

This receptive attitude is reminiscent of Paul Cezanne’s invitation: ‘All the painter should want is silence. He must shush all his inner voices of prejudice, then forget, forget, be quiet, be a perfect echo… Then on his sensitive plate, the whole landscape emerges.’ 2 In Anderson’s studio, this landscape is made up of figures that move quickly, very quickly. ‘My race is a frantic one, aiming to capture the sun’s ephemeral lines. By the time I trace a line, everything has already morphed. But it’s worthy because the dialogue is intense,’ she says.

This frantic attempt to sketch the shapes paradoxically allows for a slow and meditative space. Like a cosmic reflection the sun has of itself. One must remember that light is only visible if it encounters an object. ‘In empty space, even if he is bathed in sunlight, an astronaut will only see black ink,’ says Nobel astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan.3 By intercepting the waves’ path, the studio windows, the floor and the paper sheets are facilitators. In a way, without them, light wouldn’t be perceived and on the other hand, without light, they would remain invisible. This symbiosis is what makes the world turn.

Since the beginning of time, humans have been exploring light.

In surveying the sun, Anderson follows in their footsteps. She gets closer to the first records of solar movements. There are a multitude of them… There are, for example, the rock carvings of Val Camonica in Italy, the glowing disc carried by the ancient Egyptian deity Atum, and Stonehenge in the south of England. Erected forty centuries ago, during the Bronze Age, these dolmens and menhirs were made to be a huge cosmic clock indicating the sun’s course throughout the year.

The progress in scientific knowledge doesn’t take away from the symbolic power of the sun, its poetry and mystery. We know that the amount of energy released by the solar star from each nuclear reaction could not even power a small electric lamp. What makes it shine are the hundreds of billions of billions of billions (10 38) of reactions that take place every second at its core. This objective data does not, however, undermine its cosmic power, its ability to set the imagination on fire and spark creativity.

The sun continues to scribe its mythologies in the contemporary world. What messages do Anderson’s Sun Drawings hold? Like oracles, they neither conceal nor detect but beckon us. It is up to each and every one of us to appropriate, explore and interpret them. These red lines seem to come from the origins of writing, when writing and drawing spoke with a single voice. They hold traces of the power of light, which has always transcended human beings and driven them to express the enigma and beauty of the world.

54

This is where the Sun Drawings have their source, they register the path of light and translate its poetry as an imaginary line would draw a constellation, by connecting several stars.

Anderson is not the only one with a fascination for the sun. Many other creators entertain a meaningful dialogue with it, each in their own way.

Alexander Calder was propelled into art-making one day in 1922, when he saw to one side the sunrise and to the other side the moon descending, white, dead.4 He was repainting his boat on a Caribbean beach and this event marked for him the revelation of the universe’s presence.

As for the Land-artist, Richard Long, he recorded a walk towards a solar eclipse.5 In 1999, he left Stonehenge to travel 235 miles and reach the top of a hill at the time of the solar eclipse. A magical morning on earth...

The Cuban artist, Ana Mendieta, made herself at one with nature in order to confront time with the primordial layers of earth, water and light that bring reality to life.

The sun inspires in humans an archaic relationship with the universe. It is an invitation to reconnect with nature in a vivid way, to recognise essential ties that initiate the very possibility of existence.

However, the distance bred by digital practices undermines this fundamental relationship.

Anderson’s drawings are a meditation. They recreate a cosmic closeness inside the studio. They offer to light the revelations of an earthly stay.

They are a sensitive way to feel the infinite and to thereby increase the depth of existence.

1 All quotes by Alice Anderson are taken from an interview with the artist on 21 November 2018 2 Joachim Gasquet, Cezanne: A Memoir with Conversations, Thames and Hudson, 1991 3 Trinh Xuan Thuan, Chaos and Harmony: Perspectives on Scientific Revolutions of the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 2000 4 Maurice Bruzeau, Jacques Masson, Charles Feld, Calder à Saché, Editions Cercle D’Art, 1975 5 ‘ Walking to a Solar Eclipse–Starting from Stonehenge, A Walk of 235 Miles, Ending on a Cornish Hilltop, At a Total Eclipse of the Sun’, 1999, Richard Long: Walking the Line, Thames and Hudson, 2005

55

56

57

BODY ITINERARIES

58

59

60

Body Itineraries, performative sculpture, copper-coloured wire, 2019

62

63

Body Itineraries, performative sculpture, copper-coloured wire, 2019

65

66

Body Itineraries, performative sculpture, copper-coloured wire, 2019

Body Itineraries, performative sculpture, copper-coloured wire, 2019

69

Body Itineraries, performative sculpture, copper-coloured wire, 2019

71

72

TECHNOLOGIES OF THE INTANGIBLE

MAX CAROCCI

What makes Alice Anderson’s art so compelling for an anthropologist are the multiple ways in which her practice intersects with many areas of the discipline’s concerns. Much of Anderson’s work is underpinned by methods, approaches and concepts familiar to anthropologists from comparative studies and data recorded around the world.

The prospect of finding convergences between them and Anderson’s art renders any interpretative exercise an exciting terrain to explore from an anthropological perspective. That the artist herself should find such connections is not only symptomatic of her sensibility and aesthetic choices, but of a more profound and widespread need to find new languages that can help us reveal the workings of art in what many call a ‘post-human’ world. It is the very humanness of Anderson’s work that places it closer to an anthropological project, one that is at once loyal to human behaviour as its main subject of investigation as well as attentive to the changes engendered by the multiplication of technologies of information and communication.

Anderson’s art breathes humanness because both her artistic language and performative behaviour are rooted in humans’ predilection for finding ways to connect material and immaterial worlds through acts of deep symbolic significance.

When Alice Anderson talks about her work as a ‘rite’ she conjures up anthropological meanings and categories of analysis. The ritual elements in her gesture-based practice are not just passing references to ceremonies tinted with ‘exotic’ ethnographic flavours, they are a concrete expression of a complex personal cosmology, created to give meaning to her cultural universe and articulated on the relationship between memory, matter and the body.

73

Alice Anderson’s cosmology is structured around the notion of repetition, a common principle shared by material culture and ritual among all world cultures. Repetition is at the base of patterns, and patterns give order to the cacophony of human experience.

The deep and relevant connections she finds between different human groups’ patterned behaviours and her work are no coincidence.

Like in traditional societies where periodical ceremonial activities punctuate the cycles of life, she emphasises reiteration, repetition, rhythmic cadence and cyclical movements in her artistic practice.

Repetition indeed is what gives gravitas and momentum to her artefacts, produced through the recovery of knowledge embodied in gestures and which ultimately turn the intangible manifest.

In a purely anthropological vein, Anderson’s art is probably better understood through the concept of ‘multiverse’, a spatio-temporal existential dimension recognised by indigenous Americans, Australian aborigines and other animistic peoples, in which simultaneous overlapping planes of experience cross and trespass the boundaries between the material and the metaphysical in a multi-sensory cosmology where colours, sounds, smells and tactile perceptions are given similar emphasis and salience. Truly among the most important components that make up Anderson’s multi-sensory cosmology are the equal importance given to the texture, colour and shapes of forms she creates, and most significantly, to the gestures that turn the intangible material. Anderson’s reflective square surfaces Body Itineraries echo the multi-sensory worlds created by the Colombian Indians she visited and who, like most non-literate societies, shun Eurocentric ‘ocularcentrism’ to stress the complexities of the interplay between cognition, memory and the senses. Rather than being objects to be looked at, the iconic presences created by Anderson through her and her dancers’ meditative weaving motions require attention beyond their appearances. They demand to be experienced and not contemplated, they want to be sensed and not observed, they invite the viewers to be perceived and not simply seen so that they can finally reveal the deeply human truths they conceal.

Among many cultures around the world the making of objects (production) is likened to the making of people (reproduction).

They are equally significant operations because each gesture and bodily disposition involved in both these processes not only embody literal, evoked, inferred, referenced or indexed meanings, but also activate an object’s agency. Making is the quintessential act of transformation, one that gives power to Anderson’s creations.

The act of making also acknowledges the very life that animates the materials and that, at the same time, imbues objects with human-like qualities. It is so that the glittering gold of Byzantine icons captures the viewers in a dialogue with the divine, that New Guinean shields’ meandering patterns and pigments bedazzle the enemies, and milk 74

and blood that cover Congolese ancestors’ sculptures equally emanate the very life they are covered with. Matter, outside the scientific gaze, is hardly inert. In other times and places, things often perceived to be made by ‘inactive’ materials more often than not are thought to be alive. What is more, they are active performers in communication with humans. In almost all non- or pre-scientific societies, what in some contexts are understood as ‘objects’ are persons, subjects that have an effect on the world, on all our senses and the very body we dwell in. Statues of Hindu gods affect viewers through their gaze, Quechua sacred stones exude energies that bless worshippers, Siberian carvings manifest immaterial other-than-human beings that protect the hunters, and Amazonian masks reveal to human observers the invisible realms of spirits. Anderson’s artworks not only embody the intangible, they act upon our senses in profound and affecting ways, and evoke and make visible the numinous through their presence almost through their own volition.

Every creative act is motion, but in Anderson’s work motion is the core of her practice and not simply a set of procedures that generate an artefact. Gestures, motion and the dynamic movement of the body in space are signifying acts because they carry distinctive cultural signatures reflected in encoded messages, patterns and cultural structures that make us who we are as humans. Anderson’s Body Itineraries, crystallised in copper wire, carry the signature of her own multi-sensory cosmology. As part of it, they function in a way similar to how South American Indian textiles work as memory storage for myths, stories and other narratives. Indeed, the idea of ‘weaving memory into being’, so central to the Amerindian cultures Anderson encountered in her travels, is no stranger to her, for her ‘memorised objects’ function as mnemonic devices that index the presences that populate her own stories. This mirrors the way in which Amerindian cultures bring into being mythical characters and protagonists of prayers and invocations through the weaving process, the colours, designs and materials employed in the production of textiles. In more ways than one, both South American Indian weaves and Alice Anderson’s performed objects and surfaces render the invisible visible. They are a manifestation of a repetitive process that generates a place for metaphysical presence.

Anderson’s creative acts recover and store memories linked to stories, like Amerindian manufacturing processes do. As such they can be understood as ‘technologies of the intangible’, because they make visible spheres of experience for which Indo-European languages have no word. Her effort to find new artistic idioms that reconcile body, memory, experience and imagination brings together often incommensurable modes of being and dwelling in the world that anthropology is always eager to explore. So, anthropological analogies, 75

models and comparisons are doubly apt to explain Anderson’s rich artistic corpus. Her gestures imbue meaning into the world of the material, the quantifiable and the observable in the same way that rituals and artefacts give meaning to social and cultural life through the procedural conventions underpinned by formulae, codified motions, patterns and gestures. The ritual aspect of her work digs deep into the most human predispositions and this is what makes her art so captivating. Indeed, human inclination to ritual behaviour, anthropologists agree, is essential to life itself for it reveals our ability to reflect upon ourselves through symbolic action. Whether executed automatically (such as in manufacturing process) or self-consciously realised (as in ritual practice), all human actions are symbolic for they are signs that enable a direct dialogue between current life and lived experiences condensed in memories and stories. What these two dimensions have in common is reiteration, the fundamental principle of Anderson’s artistic quest.

The reiterative weaving motions of South American Indians’ crafts people reveal that there is no separation between the artisan, their cultural knowledge, their memory and their products.

Similarly, Anderson’s repetitive acts turn her into the very means of communication, the third element that connects intangible elements to tangible artefacts. They make her an instrument that almost alchemically transforms her person into a mechanical entity.

Reiterative motions allow Anderson herself to become the shuttle that unravels the copper thread, weaving her memorial sculptural icons. This is an act of transformation at once analogous and reverse to the process of making, in which objects come alive. Here the human actor turns herself into the medium. It is a process that requires a blurring between objects and persons, one that enables metaphysical communication between different realms of existence through the figure of the ritual specialist. As such it is fundamentally shamanic, a quality of Alice Anderson’s work and performance. Her own mutation into an instrument of metaphysical communication, as in the case of Amazonian, Arctic, North American or Siberian shamans, is an example of the paradoxical conditions of the multiverse she inhabits. A time-place where an individual is simultaneously a person and a thing, she is in front of us and yet inhabits a different spatio-temporal dimension with the purpose of deploying messages from invisible registers of reality. In her rhythmical dances and compulsive reiterations Anderson’s works create the conditions that allow a connection between the physical and the metaphysical, through her body and her creations. The trance-like state induced by Anderson’s repetitive acts is nothing short of a shamanic séance during which the portal between the phenomenal world and intangible realities is opened through performative recurrences, physical endurance, sensory deprivation, concentration and regularly spaced gestures such as tapping, winding, stomping and undulating.

76

These are all actions that recall the monotonous spinning and swaying that induce shamans into alternative states of consciousness.

Anderson vindicates the need to materialise the invisible in an increasingly disembodied world. Whether it is reminiscences or stories associated with specific items or presenting the numinous through iconic creations, she operates in an animistic mode. In this manner she mirrors the prerogatives of peoples who render tangible, in man-made objects, the spiritual and imperceptible forces that imbue the cosmos with dynamism, movement and cyclical recurrences.

If among traditional societies, seasonal rituals and patterned behaviours maintain an open connection between the material world of humans and the immaterial elements that populate their cosmologies, Anderson’s rites, objects and drawings similarly ensure that her audiences engage all their senses with her own worldview, a multiverse in which art enables memory and the intangible to be more than visible, they are apprehended phenomenologically. It is with these deeply moving and profound acts of transformation that Anderson’s works add meaning to our experience and, in so doing, perhaps make us a little bit more human.

77

NUHÉ

ROSE LEJEUNE

Performance (North South East West) Seven poles, around two metres high, are placed in a circle, each is approximately twenty centimetres in diameter. Three have been encased completely in copper-coloured wire. Neatly finished in the thin metal, they resemble large drill bits, totemic elements of machinery. Their surfaces are mostly smooth but also criss-crossed in places, giving them an alternately shiny metallic and matt casing – nevertheless weaved perfectly.

Four performers work individually at the other four poles. The internal cores of these four pillars show themselves to be tree trunks or thick branches, knotted and patinated. Immediately, I understand that they will be worked upon until they too are completely covered. The performers each hold a spool of copper-coloured thread. They pass the fine wire around the trunks, passing it around the back to the front and between their hands in rotation. One stands on a box, reaching high to the top of her pole. Another creates a full body motion from his action, his arms stretching wide and his torso rolling through as he circles around.

Though they are bound in a common task, each performer works in solipsistic solitude, alone, creating their own rhythm and motion, using their own technique and pace.

Through the temperature of their movement I can sense how long each has been performing. The speed with which they work seems to be inversely proportional to their absorption in their task; at the beginning, the heat each generates is fierce, their labour is clear 78

and self-conscious. As they become absorbed in the practice, they cool, the force of the gesture slows. They conserve energy and yet become more focused, as if the trick of time is to absorb the body into the work, transforming the task into a process of automation and meditation.

Their action is ritualistic, seemingly unaware of its audience and context – of the flow of people walking past, stopping, watching, whether for a moment or some time. The performers are engrossed in their action.

I am incidental. They do not perform for me, instead they work intently, intensely, automatically, so that I can sense the transience of my own viewing. They were here before I arrived, they will remain after I leave.

Ritual extends from large-scale social and political processes to the most intimate aspects of our experience. It is a process of transformation, a rite that can transcend one state into another. Here, it changes not only wood into metal, but performer into material – gradually they change from being the makers of the work into the work itself – copper, wood and body act together and alter each other in a performative circuit.

This is a performance relating both to the theatre of the gallery and tethered to a ritual far from this place. I am simply its witness and I must decide how long to stay, where to stand and how to connect to the ancient ritual that it relates to, that exists elsewhere.

Performers memorising the structural elements of the work through their motion, working in parallel with one another, morph the familiar tree branches into totems of the unknowable and intangible.

Nuhé Once fully memorised, these poles will be assembled together with others. The complete work will have twenty-one poles, together forming a nuhé. A nuhé is a Colombian Kogi temple from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The construction of a nuhé is the physical and architectural expression of the community – a gathering place that is both spiritual and political. A site of gathering. A temple, a cosmic observatory.

The nuhé is both the structure within which the transformation takes place and the portal through which it is possible to see the spiritual.

North South East West. Through the performance, we witness a vanishing act in which the natural wood of each pole is gradually bound until it is gone. Ritually disappeared, petrified in copper.

The finished poles have been orientated so as to point to something outside, another place – one to which the performers were attuned during their action, a disappearing act that has created a new space.

Made of copper, the first mineral material used by mankind, malleable and ductile, its power lies in its conductive mutability, the material 79

is self-contained and immersive. Mummified and built, the construction transfers electricity and heat. It is both primitive and wholly contemporary.

Here, within the structure, I am afforded time to configure myself in relation not only to it but the space of the gallery within which it sits – the strangeness of the construction of the white cube containing this ritual object. I walk around, through, within. I see how it interacts with time through sun and shadow. I think about how the building sits on the site, in the city, the world, the cosmos – sites bigger and bigger until I can’t make sense of them.

Here, copper is the material that records, now stilled and a material of memory itself. Pulled thin, into thread-like wire, it becomes a material to weave with and with which to create a physical structure connected to the ground it sits on as much as the clouds above.

North South East West. Copper totems capture and distribute the vital energies of the poles. Through the ritual of memorising, I witness the making of new meaning.

Nuhé. The nuhé works with two verbs: to see and to seize.

‘You will see what exists and you will seize what of that suits you.’

80

81

NUHÉ

82

83

NuhĂŠ (detail), Architectures Data series, performative sculpture,

84

copper-coloured wire and wood, 2018–ongoing

85

86

87

88

List of works pages 8 – 9 There not exist sign Lost Gestures performance coloured pencils on paper 100 × 120 cm 2018 pages 10 – 11 Sigma Sign Lost Gestures performance coloured pencils on paper 100 × 150 cm 2018 pages 12 – 13 Dividing Sign from Computer Keyboard Lost Gestures performance coloured pencils on paper 100 × 120 cm 2018 pages 14 – 15 Power Sign from Computer Keyboard Lost Gestures performance coloured pencils on paper 100 × 120 cm 2018 pages 28 – 29 Sound Painting copper oil paint on paper 75 × 55 cm 2018 pages 30 – 31 Sound Painting copper oil paint on paper 75 × 55 cm 2018 pages 32 – 33 Sound Painting copper oil paint on paper 75 × 55 cm 2018 pages 34 – 35 Sound Painting copper oil paint on paper 75 × 55 cm 2018

pages 38 – 39 Sun Drawing oil pencil on paper 40 × 60 cm 2017 pages 40 – 41, 43 Sun Drawing oil pencil on paper 40 × 60 cm 2018 pages 42 – 43 Sun Drawing oil pencil on paper 40 × 60 cm 2018 pages 44 – 45 Sun Drawing oil pencil on paper 40 × 60 cm 2018

pages 68 – 69 Body Itineraries performative sculpture copper-coloured wire 170 × 170 cm 2019 pages 70 – 71 Body Itineraries performative sculpture copper-coloured wire 170 × 170 cm 2019 pages 82 – 83 Nuhé performative sculpture copper-coloured wire and wood dimensions variable each pole circa 250 × 015 cm 2018–ongoing

pages 46 – 47 Sun Drawing oil pencil on paper 40 × 60 cm 2018 pages 60 – 61 Body Itineraries performative sculpture copper-coloured wire 170 × 170 cm 2019 pages 64 – 65 Body Itineraries performative sculpture copper-coloured wire 170 × 170 cm 2019 pages 66 – 67 Body Itineraries performative sculpture copper-coloured wire 170 × 170 cm 2019

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

Biography

Alice Anderson (b. 1972, London) is a performance artist based in London.

Anderson studied fine art at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and Goldsmiths College, London. Since 2008, Anderson has been exploring body movement in her practice that includes studies of femininity and gender.

Alice Anderson’s drawings are generated through repetitive gestures and performance experiences with her dancers, using oil pastel, copper oil paint and coloured pencils.

Her sculptures are made from weaving copper-coloured wire around objects and architecture to ‘memorise’ them. Anderson uses the term ‘memorisation’ to describe the tracing of memory circuits around objects using wire in a meditative ritual.

In Body Disruptions, Anderson takes as a starting point the development of technologies such as bio-technology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to improve and perfect our human capabilities, and celebrates body weaknesses and brain failures as a reminder of what makes us human.

Anderson has exhibited and performed internationally at museums including National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow (2019); Drawing Room, London (2019); Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018); La Patinoire Royale, Brussels (2018); Espace Vanderborght, Brussels (2018); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017, 2010); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2016); Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland (2015); Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris (2015); Wellcome Collection, London (2014); 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012); Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (2011); Freud Museum, London (2011).

Anderson’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland; Wellcome Collection, London; Fonds national d’art contemporain, France; Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain, France; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris.

In 2019, Anderson is artist-in-residence of Atelier Calder, Saché, France.

99

100

101

102

Archive Images pages 6 – 7 Alice Anderson and Ino Riga performing ‘Lost Gestures’, 2018, at A Performance Affair, curated by Liv Vaisberg, Will Kerr, and Frédéric de Goldschmidt, presented by La Patinoire Royale-Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels pages 26 – 27 Alice Anderson performing a ‘Transitional Dance’, with ‘Sound Totem’, Spiritual Machines series, copper-coloured wire and speakers, 2017 pages 36 – 37 Alice Anderson making Sun Drawings in London. As a probable result of climate change, the summer of 2018 was a particularly sunny one in London pages 58 – 59 Alice Anderson in her studio performing a ‘Transitional Dance’, London, 2017 pages 62 – 63 Alice Anderson performing a ‘Transitional Dance’ at La Patinoire Royale, Brussels, 2018 page 81 A Kogi nuhé under construction, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia pages 82 – 83 Alice Anderson, Jonathan Caruana, Samuel N’Sengi and Ino Riga memorising the architectural elements of on-going collective artwork ‘Nuhé’, performative sculpture, copper-coloured wire and wood, dimensions variable, 2018-ongoing pages 86 – 87 Alice Anderson performing a ‘Transitional Dance’, London, 2017 pages 90 – 91 ‘Columns Data’, Architectures Data series, permanent sculptures, copper-coloured wire, 500 × 090 cm. Eiffel Historical Building, Paris, 2016 pages 92 – 93 ‘Floorboards Data’, Architectures Data series, floorboards, copper-coloured wire, 225 × 015 cm. Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2015 page 94 ‘Totem 10’, Spiritual Machines series, vinyls, copper-coloured wire, 175 × 033 cm.

Anderson’s studio, 2017 pages 96 – 97 Alice Anderson and Ino Riga performing ‘Capsules Objects’, original objects, Cor-ten steel. Malbuisson Art, Malbuisson, 2016 page 98 ‘Lift Data’, Architectures Data series, copper-coloured wire, 215 × 166 × 089 cm.

Howick Place, London, 2016 page 101 ‘181 Kilometres Walk’, copper-coloured wire, metal, 200 cm diameter. Saatchi Gallery, London, 2015 page 102 ‘Cables Data’, Architectures Data series, internet cables, copper-coloured wire, 250 × 006 cm each. Wellcome Collection, London, 2015

103

Alice Anderson: Body Disruptions 12 March–10 May 2019 Waddington Custot 11 Cork Street London W1S 3LT T +44 (0)20 7851 2200 mail@waddingtoncustot.com www.waddingtoncustot.com Monday to Friday 10am–6pm Saturday 10am–4pm All artworks © Alice Anderson, 2019 Except p.98 ‘Everything is Connected’, 2012 © Peter Liversidge, 2019 All photography © Alice Anderson Studio, 2019 All texts © the authors pp.17–24, ‘Les gestes couleurs’ © Annabelle Gugnon, 2019 pp.49–55, ‘Les dessins soleil’ © Annabelle Gugnon, 2019 (both translated from original French text by Ella Marder) pp.73–77 ‘Technologies of the Intangible’ © Max Carocci, 2019 pp.78–80 ‘Nuhé’ © Rose Lejeune, 2019 Alice Anderson Studio Director: Laurin von der Osten-Sacken Lighting Designer: Rupert Barth von Wehrenalp Performers: Alice Anderson, Katia Beltrame, Bjorn Borgstrom, Suzanna Bower, Jonathan Caruana, Génie Herbert, Josué Lozano, Samuel N’Sengi, Laurin von der Osten-Sacken, Ino Riga, Jean-Gabriel Vidal Designed by Praline, David Tanguy and Hollie Smith Printed by Unicum Published by Waddington Custot Co-ordinated by Miranda Chance © Waddington Custot, London, 2019 ISBN 978-1-9164568-3-9

104