Parasite the White Cube: The Productivity of the Empty Space
Research class by Yuki Okumura
What if you’re invited to hold an exhibition that opens in a few days while having no work ready, or no habit of making works?
You may panic, but I’d just walk into the space with empty hands.
Because I believe you can make a wonderful work by conceiving and performing simple, game-like actions, and a wonderful exhibition by carrying out such a procedure entirely in the space, using found elements only.
I discovered the former method by rereading conceptual art as the act of performing intuitive conceptions, not presenting intellectual concepts. To solve the method’s main problem—disconnection between making and exhibiting—I developed the latter approach.
Curious to learn this formula firsthand? Join this research class taking place in the Expo Space of Het Bos.
We will explore how to give up control of your body and life and let them translate the organicity of the space into new, surprising forms, instead of exploiting the ideology of the white cube. Traces of our individual actions will naturally form a group exhibition.
No need to prepare anything. No special skill or talent is required. Just bring yourself and have fun. It’s not about somebody’s genius—it’s about everybody’s uniqueness.
14.10 Session 1: Introduction / Exercise
15.10 Session 2: Conception / Instruction / Performance
16:10 Session 3: Performance / Reflection → Exhibition opening
17:10 Session 4: One-Day Exhibition
The exhibition by students of Yuki Okumura’s research class will open during the evening event at Het Bos on Thursday 16 October, and will remain on view the following day.
Expo Space open to the public
Thu 16.10: 18:00 – 23:00
Fri 17.10: 13:00 – 23:00
(Photo: Juli Bierich)
Yuki Okumura
Fascinated by our confinement to a singular, particular body and informed by his experience as a translator, Yuki Okumura’s oeuvre is a growing list of escape attempts from identity, individuality, and egocentrism. He explores the intuitive conception and procedural performance of self-instructed, chance-oriented simple actions in the legacy of conceptual art as a process to translate not only the conditions and contexts of the site but also the personality and biography of the concipient-performer. His practice includes conducting workshops that introduce this methodology to a wide range of participants as a playful way to reveal and renew each person’s sense of bodily self—as an open part of the world at large or the exhibition space in particular.
Yuki Okumura is PhD researcher at the Academy.
yuki.okumura@ap.be
>> This research class is part of the Research Week during the annual research festival ARTICULATE.
