Digital Wondering 18
Digital Wonderings are a series of online speculations around the curatorial theme of TRUST. They can take any form, from a conversation, a short statement, a film or a photographic series. Invited contributors come from a wide range of disciplines and can respond and react to the theme and the format as they wish.
Artist Portrait: Laure Prouvost (FR)
For TRUST the French artist will show two films that could refer to the troubled times in which we live: ‘I need to take care of my conceptual Granddad’ from 2010, and ‘Taking Care (Love Letters to Fellow Art Work)’ from 2019, both part of Laure Prouvost ’s monitor video series. In these, without showing her face, she speaks to the viewer about the object or relic placed in front of her. She makes her hands the main character of the films. The title of the work ‘I Need To Take Care Of My Conceptual Granddad’ refers to the relative whom she claims was a conceptual artist and a good friend of Kurt Schwitters. However, the video also points to the British artist John Latham, a catalogue of whose work she smothers with moisturiser. Latham was an influential artist for Prouvost early in her career.
In the spring of the first lockdown last year, Prouvost screened ‘Taking Care ‘(Love Letter to Fellow Art Work)’ on her website, offering comfort in these trying times. The camera focuses on her torso and gesturing hands, which appear to be attempting to caress the camera, as she whispers: ‘I will take care of you … kiss you … If you feel old, if you feel out of time, or not in fashion anymore … I will be there for you.’
A perpetual question for Prouvost in her work is how people can feel what surrounds them. Like the octopus, which has its brain in its tentacles, she believes that it’s possible to think by feeling. There are no limitations between her projects; her works are organisms that feel each other, flowing and growing into one another. For her, a good art experience makes one see the world slightly differently, sets the imagination going and brings lightness into the viewer, especially in these times.
These two films are kindly lent by Prouvost and the Lisson Gallery, London.
Biography
Laure Prouvost was born in 1963 in Moulennbreak, Albania. She lives and works in an underwater mobilhome to research tunnel engineering, currently in the Channel. She practices making video, boobs, sounds and tea cups, objects and installation. Here a long list of museums and institutions. A line, interesting things, a coma, a line, a list of residencies and prizes. A selection of solo projects including: a Swallowing and Breathing in Eindhoven, a Smoking Mother in Copenhagen, a Melting Into Another in Lisbon, an Occupied Paradise in Aalst, Deep See Blue Surrounding You in Venice and Toulouse, a Waiting Room with objects in Minneapolis, a New Museum for Granddad in Milano, A tearoom for Grandma in Derry, a karaoke room in Brussels, a new octopus ink vodka bar for Gregor in Rotterdam, A travel agency for an Uncle in Frankfurt, a lobby for love among the artists in the Hague and Luzern… tea bags, and wet floors and tentaculees.