Promise No Promises!

Promise No Promises!


THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. Birds and Cats – Laure Prouvost

June 21, 2022

Birds and cats is the ninth episode that follows a conversation with artist Laure Prouvost. The title of this podcast stems from one of the first questions Sonia Fernández Pan, the curator of this podcast asked Laure Prouvost during the conversation, inspired by the multiple characters Laure embodies through her projects. Her answer to the question about who she would like to be if she wasn't herself was "a bird", commenting on this animal's ability to fly. Sonia added that she would like to be a cat, perhaps because one of its great talents is the daily right to laziness in a world where life works relentlessly. They ended the conversation by returning to our animal relationship as bird and cat, with Laure flirting with the possibility that one catches and eats the other.

 

In the many biographies that Laure Prouvost has written about herself over the years the artist strays from traditional artist biographies, describing her work according to the narrative and experiential drive of her projects and her way of naming them to ones where the institutional curriculum is replaced by a list of situations that her projects were able to create: Melting Into Another, an Occupied Paradise, Deep See Blue Surrounding You, a Waiting Room with objects, a New Museum for Grand Dad, A tearoom for Grand Ma, a lobby for love among the artists… Within these places we are no longer an impersonal audience, but characters who enter temporal worlds where fiction becomes materially present and real.

 

The difference between fiction and lying is a question Sonia Fernández Pan also shared with Laure Prouvost, inspired by how she never fully reveals what is fiction and what is not in her work. The storytelling surrounding her artistic practice is another element of her work, strategically confusing spheres that the traditional art system insists on keeping apart.

 

This conversation with Laure Prouvost took place in April 2022 in separate places. Sonia Fernández Pan was listening to Laure Prouvosts words from the computer and paying attention to the sound of the strokes of a drawing that Laure brought into their meeting. There are many similarities between writing and drawing. Both arise from the body; both produce a physical and intimate relationship between head and hands. The strokes of Laure's drawing added sound textures to her words. To listen to her voice and strokes, come in and enjoy.