The Host - An Incomplete History of Performance at SMAK
Performance 40min
The Host takes the form of a subjective guided tour through the history of Performance Art in S.M.A.K. Ula Sickle conducted her research through an oral history, setting up a series of conversations with the museum staff. Tracing as it were the museum’s embodied archive, the attention shifts away from the visual to experience, memory and context.
The performance marks the first instance of the re-activation of Richard Venlet’s artwork ‘Museum for a Small City’ entitled ‘Rebuild’, that partly functions as a display of the S.M.A.K. collection. It ultimately comprehends the current immateriality of the re-activation on an institutional level, namely as the lack of attention for Performance and Live Art in public collections.
The Host: An Incomplete History of Performance at SMAK, was performed on the 7th & 9th of February 2020 as part of Museum for a Small City; Rebuild at SMAK museum in Ghent, Belgium.
photos: Dirk Pauwels