Hanne Lippard: Language is a skin / Paul Heintz: Degrés Est

Hanne Lippard: Language is a skin 
Making use of her voice as a primary material, Norwegian artist Hanne Lippard (b. 1984) explores the social forms governing speech. Her work, taking the form of sound and text-based installations, probes the voice as a tool of emancipation and alienation in times of hyper-connectivity. Through a collection of works brought together under a title borrowed from the semiologist Roland Barthes’ work A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, the artist orchestrates the encounter between the body of the visitor, text, and public space.

The feminine voice has always been associated with care (the voice of emotional or domestic space), summons (prophecy, Pythie) or hysteria. Commodified by the current all-pervading productivity, the voice becomes entangled with the machine, to enter then the service sector—in the form of intelligent voice personnel such as GPS, smart speakers, voicemail. In an era of anonymization of speech (Twitter, Instagram) and of knowledge (Wikipedia), of an erotisized disincarnation of the feminine voice (podcasts, dating apps), the latter is approached by Lippard by embodied means. For her first major solo show in France, the artist proposes an experience as a quest for empowerment. Language is a skin explores the notion of anonymity, spearhead of the digital economy which is here juxtaposed against that of the visitor. How can one speak to an audience without lumping it together into a homogenous group? The exhibition also investigates standardization of affects and allowed incapacity to say, for the human body or the machine. It puts in play the disobjectification of the artwork as much as that of the feminine body, in the time of a fourth wave of feminism. Through the display of our own planned obsolescence, Hanne Lippard invites us to rethink the exhibition as a utopic space, that of a possible emancipation or brave space, a space aknowledging diference and fostering dialogue, in a world in which one must give a voice.

Hanne Lippard has recently shown her work in solo shows at KW, Berlin (2017), Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2018), Goethe Pop Up Institute, Minneapolis (2019), Furiosa, Monaco (2020), MUHKA, Anvers (2021). A concert by Luci Lippard (Lucinda Dayhew & Hanne Lippard) on October 16, 2021 will complete the exhibition as its last piece.

The exhibition is curated by Agnès Violeau. It is supported by Office for Contemporary Art, Norway, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway, and the Norwegian Embassy in Paris.

Paul Heintz: Degrés Est
Combining fiction and reality, mental images and archival documents, Paul Heintz’s (b. 1989) practice ranges from installation to film and sound. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Nancy and the Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Paul Heintz, invited by Fanny Gonella for the seventh iteration of prospective room Degrés Est, presents an investigation-based project.

Taking George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 as its starting point, the project is the culmination of an investigation he meticulously led. Accompanied by a detective, Heintz published a small ad in the British newspaper The Sun searching namesakes of the main character of the book, Winston Smith. The artist received responses from 40 men, of which six accepted to meet him. The exhibition introduces the research material of the investigation and reveals the process—a collection of notes, plans, scouting maps, and investigation tools is presented on panels. Copies of the novel are displayed, bearing comments by five of the tracked-down Winston Smiths. Also on view, the film Character was produced around the orchestrated meetings of these namesakes who share nothing but a name and a fiction.

A notebook introducing quotes is published for the occasion as a limited edition. A book documenting the project has been published by Éditions Extensibles (Paris).

Events:
Concert: Luci Lippard / Kükens 
October 16, 7–10pm 
Berlin-based no-wave band Luci Lippard (Lucinda Dayhew, Hanne Lippard), minimal electro-punk performance by Kükens
Writing workshop with Kiyémis, Afro-feminist author, poet
November 20, 2:30–5:30pm
From writing to saying things out loud. Poetry as a tool of empowerment.
Lecture performance: Listen to our calls
January 15, 4–6pm
Vocal counter-coaching in a patriarcal context. With Caroline Dejoie, Camille Islert and Mathilde Leïchlé

Director: Fanny Gonella
Curator: Agnès Violeau
Public Programs: Justine Jean