Festivals and Films

Sharon Hayes. In the Near Future 2005-08.

From 02 Jul 3008 to 01 Aug 2008

3 July-2 Aug 2008. The Tanya Leighton Gallery displays a performance-based artwork by the American artist Sharon Hayes, who stages anachronistic and spectacular protest actions. Hayes analyses the figure of the protester, the speech act and the contemporary construction of a public speech in a public space. She simulates four different situations of public speech or protest, which take place in four different cities (New York, London, Warsaw and Vienna). Her performances are inspired by protests from the past but also investigate the possible future ones. For ten years the New-York based artist has worked with different media, such as video, performance and installation, creating situations that expose dramatic friction between collective activities and personal actions. Her main goal is to investigate the relations among history, politics and space and the process of individual and collective subject formation.