THE CRADLE OF HUMANKIND
THE CRADLE OF HUMANKIND
Steven Cohen
Cabaret de curiosités | # Revue 6 > Danse | samedi 11 juin > 19h | studio
http://www.lephenix.fr/saison/cabaret-de-curiosites/the-cradle-of-humankind
Performer sud-africain qui défie la loi des genres, Steven Cohen s’est consacré pendant vingt ans à la création d’œuvres plastiques exposées largement dans le
monde entier. Parallèlement, il développe des performances artistiques dans différents espaces tels que les scènes, les musées, les galeries d’art et les lieux publics insolites (stations de
taxis, champs de courses, centres commerciaux, etc.) ou dans des lieux où il n’a pas été invité.
Il apparaît de façon inopinée et souvent importune. Ses performances explorent plusieurs moyens d’expression et abordent différentes questions identitaires liées
à la judaïté, à l’homosexualité, au racisme ou à l’identité ethnique. Son regard critique sur notre société fait de lui un des artistes les plus engagés et militants des arts de la
scène.
Les artistes Latitudes Prod. sont : Steven Cohen, Emmanuel Eggermont, Rémy Héritier, Latifa Laâbissi, Benoît Lachambre, Louise Lecavalier et Claudia
Triozzi
Cette création est dédiée à la mémoire de Merrill Plagis
Coproductions :
Le Quartz - scène nationale de Brest, Les Spectacles Vivants - Centre Pompidou (Paris), Le Festival d’Automne (Paris), le phénix – scène nationale de Valenciennes, La Bâtie – Festival de
Genève, le théâtre Garonne (Toulouse), Open Latitudes (Latitudes Contemporaines, Les Halles de Schaerbeek - Bruxelles, L’Arsenic - Lausanne, Le Manège.mons/Maison Folie, Festival Body
Mind - Varsovie) avec le soutien du programme Culture de l’Union Européenne.
Avec le soutien de :
La Ville de Lille, de la Drac Nord-Pas de Calais, de la Région Nord-Pas de Calais , Culturesfrance, Du DICREAM, du CRRAV (Centre de Ressources Audiovisuelles) de Tourcoing, du CECN de Mons et
du Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains de Tourcoing.
NEWS: Steven Cohen premieres his major new work, The Cradle of Humankind, at the Festival les Anticodes 2011 in Brest on 16-19 March. Group exhibitions include Space, Ritual,
Absence: Liminality in South African visual art at FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg (10 March - 1 April), and ARS 11 at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (15
April - 27 November).
EXHIBITIONS / WORKS
PUBLICATIONS
BIOGRAPHY
Steven Cohen was born in 1962 in South Africa and lives in Lille, France. He is a performance artist who stages interventions in the public realm and in gallery/theatre spaces. He is also an
extraordinary crafter of objects, ranging from the sculptural assemblages that form his costumes to the silkscreened canvases and furniture of his early career. His work invariably draws
attention to that which is marginalised in society, starting with his own identity as a gay, Jewish man. One of his best-known performances is Chandelier (2001/2), in which Cohen,
dressed in vertiginous heels and an illuminated chandelier tutu, interacted with residents of a squatter camp in Newtown, Johannesburg, as it was in the process of being destroyed; the work
exists as both live performance and video documentation of the public intervention. Chandelier was presented alongside Dancing Inside Out and Maid in South Africa at
the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of the Festival d'Automne in November 2008; in 2009, Cohen premiered Golgotha at the Centre Pompidou as part of the same festival. Performances in
2010 included Chandelier at the Festival Rayons Frais in Tours, France; Golgotha at the Munich Opera Festival, Bavarian State Opera, Munich; and Chandelier and a new
site-specific work, The Wandering Jew, at the first Aichi Triennale, Japan; performances in the first two months of 2011 include Golgotha at Le Centre Chorégraphique National
de Tours, France, and at Les Rencontres du Court, Le Bouscat, Bordeaux; Chandelier, Cleaning Time and Maid in South Africa, and Golgotha at Le TAP in Poitiers,
France; and Golgotha at the Festival Escena Contemporánea, Madrid. Recent group exhibitions include Dada South? at the South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2009-10);
Life Less Ordinary: Performance and display in South African art at the Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, UK (2009); The Enterprise of Art, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Naples
(2008); and Under Pain of Death, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2008). From 2003 to 2008 he was an associated artist of the Ballet Atlantique/Régine Chopinot. In 2009 Cohen took up
residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Center for Performance Research in
New York. Full CV
For more info see www.at.artslink.co.za/~elu/stevencohen/
