2009 : Performat, IUAV, VENICE

Performat is a project by Marcella Vanzo to create new performances out of historical pieces. This script is made of three seminal works of the 70s: Semiotics of the kitchen by Martha Rosler, The Manifesto for Maintenace Art by Mierle Ukeles Laderman and La Roquette by Nil Yalter, Nicol Croiset and Judy Blum.

70s feminism mixed up and spiced with Vogue, the Big Brother and plastic surgery. Performat is a traveling, site specific performance and as a live concert it tours different venues. Whereas the Milanese version was a domestic performance with a housewife, broadcast live by a sport reporter at Lucie Fontaine’s space, for Performa09 in New York Marcella Vanzo wrote lyrics and Jennifer Walshe music for a song performed by Lucie Fontaine, this time embodied by Walshe. The song took the sound of the Italian musical wave of the 60s as its starting point, a style that was the soundtrack to the first attempts at sexual liberation, following on from the Brit-pop song stylings of Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark. A big female voice carrying a big emotion. Lucie Fontaine dressed in appropriate garb, centering around magnificent eyeliner which would make Twiggy jealous. The microphone is her instrument, drawing the audience closer to her intimate whisperings and drawing back to allow her voice to fill the room in yet another modulation.

Documentation is yet another issue engaged by Vanzo and Fontaine. Not satisfied by how the documentation of 70s performance has now been transformed into regular works of art, they created an alternative way to document Performat.

An LP in limited edition is the byproduct of the performances, together with different merchandise to accompany each iteration.

The Venetian version of Performat was a workshop/discussion with the students of IUAV.