INFERNO

Lili Reynaud-Dewar “My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class)” / Audain Gallery, Vancouver (CA) / until december 12, 2015.

Reynaud-Dewar’s exhibition and seminar are part of an ongoing series of print, performance and installation works titled My Epidemic, in which Reynaud-Dewar quotes and edits numerous authors and texts influenced by AIDS and the impact that the epidemic has had on individual bodies and social cultures. In this series the artist discusses the virality of artistic, intellectual and social life, by circulating between discourses of epidemiology, collective action, artistic production and identity formation.

“My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class)” follows the project My Epidemic (small modest bad blood opera) that Reynaud-Dewar produced for “All the World’s Futures” 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The project featured a libretto produced with Macon, and a public reading with her students from the Haute École d’art et design. During the Biennale she also released her book My Epidemic (texts on my work and the work of other artists), which was designed in in collaboration with Ramaya Tegegne.

In both the exhibition and the SCA seminar she will host in the Audain Gallery, Reynaud-Dewar will perform Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard’s seminar “Beyond Death: Viral Discontents and Contemporary Notions about AIDS”. The seminar was held during the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 for post-graduate students at the Università IUAV di Venezia. Seminar participants responded to Melgaard’s syllabus with texts and artworks that contributed to his exhibition for the Norweigan pavilion, “Baton Sinister”.

Reynaud-Dewar will teach Melgaard’s syllabus, which was published in the catalogue for “Baton Sinister”, and will work with undergraduate SCA students through his selected texts and films. In collaboration with Tegegne, seminar participants will edit, transpose and collage excerpts from the texts, to produce posters that convey their individual and collective reading of the works. The exhibition also features a video produced by BookTV, an initiative by Beckbooks in Geneva.

Images : Lili Reynaud-Dewar, “My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class)” installation views at Audain Gallery, Vancouver, 2015 – Copyright the artist and Audain Gallery, Vancouver. Photo: Blaine Campbell