Belleville, Paris
Fabienne Audéoud
Are You Alone?
Joseph TangIn 1999, Peggy Phelan gave a lecture at Goldsmiths College London where I was studying, which she introduced with an old feminist 'joke': "Two women are at a bar having a drink when a guy comes in and addresses them: Are you alone?" She then discussed how President Clinton was asked if he was 'alone with Monica Lewinsky' when he did or did-not-have sex with her. In 'Unmarked: The Politics of Performance' [1] she writes : "If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture" and states that "the production and reproduction of visibility are part of the labour of the reproduction of capitalism." Are You Alone? is my first solo gallery show. I've never been on any market before, neither on le grand marché de la bonne meuf [2] (hello Virginie Despentes) nor on the employment one. But I'd love to enter the art market. I would very much appreciate being exchanged - for a certain figure - or certain figures. And that's where I tell you I was diagnosed on the autism spectrum a few years ago, in my early fifties. It's only since then that I realised everything I had done as an artist was an attempt at materialising experiences I thought could be shared, nearly always the ones I felt were not quite normal, normal not in a moral sense but in the sense as not 'conforming to a standard, usual, typical, or expected'. If in this show you experience elements of extreme loneliness, akwardness and feel invaded (or besieged) by words it's because it is what I do. Even when I don't plan it, it's what I do. Here's what I would say about the exhibition as it 'lies' in progress in my studio: Four cardboard models stand on large brown boxes/plinths. They are the centre pieces of the show and were reconstituted from the 2019 retrospective project [3], where all the work I had presented during the previous twenty-five years was reproduced on a 1/15th scale. The foam-board structures that made up the fictional and enormous institution hosting the survey exhibition have been re-assembled into four rectangular empty spaces. The photocopied paintings and the videos on iPads and iPhones have been removed. A few isolated objects seem to have been left behind, such as two baroque chandeliers, one hanging from the gallery ceiling, and one in the form of a diamond basketball hoop (hello David Hammons, I only realized later it is one of your iconic pieces), a camp bed (hello Julie Beker, I remember you had to create a master piece to pay the rent [4] amongst a few other leftovers (hello series series series series). The walls have been torn apart, cut and re-cut.Various other architectural elements de-glued and re-glued, displaying numerous interventions and traces of patching-ups. Only the floors are pristine clean, thus attesting some serious maintenance work (Hello Mierle Laderman Ukeles, it would be nice if you had a major show in France). The walls not used to rebuild the empty/desolated art spaces are displayed as flatten sculptures on the gallery walls. Hello Fernanda Gomes, hello Win McCarty, hello older formal artists we all love. I personally find comfort in looking at squares that are not quite square, cuts that are not straight, crop marks that won't go, not-quite-right angles, glue drips and stains of all sorts. Right in front of me like paintings, portraits, landscapes and other abstract representations of desires that do not always have to do with nerve endings. Penises are painted on large canvases, as words rather than organs or themes. As Elsa Vettier has it : "You are (I am) at the same time subjected to and claiming literality.' Pénis is not a speech act, not even in French. So I shouldn't really call in J.L. Austin's 'How To Do Things With Words' [5] and 'the issues of the performative versus the merely constative'. I never really understood the psychoanalytical lack of (penis), maybe because 'lack' is such a typically capitalist notion. It's more about trying to deal with all the 'fuck you' and 'fuck them' I hear/read. What does 'Fuck the Police' or 'Fuck Patriarchy' mean? Should one ever wish unwanted sex for anyone? I don't want this threat in my mouth. And if fucking is not about fucking, what is it about then? Should anyone come at some point? I'd rather you fucked me. —Fabienne Audéoud 1 - Phelan, Peggy; Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge; 1st edition, 1993 2 - the big market of the good looking girl 3 - artviewer.org, Fabienne Audeoud at Tonus 4 - on display at MOMA in 2019 5 - Austin, John L. Harvard; How To Do Things With Words, University Press; 2nd edition 1975