4 April 2024

15:25 – 16:10

Amphi 4

Besnik Haxhillari

Born in Albania, Besnik Haxhillari is a visual artist and researcher. He has been working in duo with Flutura Preka under the artist name The Two Gullivers. He regularly exhibits and presents his interdisciplinary performances on the national and international scene. He is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Arts at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). He is interested in the creative process and the genetics of performance art through preparatory drawing. THE TWO GULLIVERS, Flutura Preka and Besnik Haxhillari, have been working together as a performance art duo since 1998 under the name The Two Gullivers. The GULLIVER concept, inspired by Jonathan Swift’s fable, involves the idea of travel, emigration and displacement as an integral part of the work. Their artworks have been presented at the Venice Biennale (1999), After The Wall, Moderna Museet (1999) and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2000), the Beijing Biennale (2005), the Musée national des Beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ, 2016) and the Musée d’arts contemporain de Montréal (MAC, 2018), and MANIFESTA 14, Western Balkans Projects (2022), among others.

How does performance art engage collective energy?

Performance art is ephemeral, and is characterized by the production of an energy that is often elusive at first glance. For this conference, we’ll be talking specifically about this characteristic of performance as an art form, by analyzing one of our performative works, Le souffle de l’artiste, presented in different locations and with different devices, between 2014 and 2024. This performance is conceived by the artist’s engagement in action in relation to the visiting public who join us to blow white balloons and fill our cubic space. The public’s involvement is seen as a very important aspect in adding an eternal dimension to the work of art in the context of representation in museums and galleries. Le souffle de l’artiste is an ephemeral work of art, and as such it is adopted and transformed according to the place of presentation, as an act that lasts for hours, days or even weeks, becoming an artistic event that pushes back the boundaries of the work of art. This work constitutes a human energy that is stored and archived temporally in white balloons, forming a colossal and spontaneous sculpture, both fragile and delicate, in an attempt to give form and definition to what is usually free and limitless.