Everyone loves disco. Even Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant. At the end of May, while the American choreographers Gerard & Kelly were detailing their installation and performance cycles at the Center Pompidou, and one of them had just uttered the word “disco”, the computer in their Aubervilliers studio launched a thunderous “yes! ». A clear and assumed yes. Almost enthusiastic. As if artificial intelligence knew its owners.
It’s because the duo’s Parisian performance is steeped in references to disco. In gallery 3 of Beaubourg, the one overlooking the Stravinsky fountain, the two artists have installed a floor made up of mirrors, pianos, suspended a giant disco ball. On the wall, a neon has been hung, reproducing in red letters an enigmatic sentence: “The Lessing is Miracle” (“erasure is a miracle”).
These mysterious words glow all night and surprise passers-by, gallery 3 being the only one in the museum to be visible from the street. ” Who knows ? Maybe, at night, people in the street will start dancing? », have fun Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, born in 1978 and 1979 respectively.
With stars Guillaume Diop and Germain Louvet
Inside, in any case, it dances. Since June 29, performances of their performance have been held there, Gay Guerrilla, with a surprising cast: opera singer Davóne Tines, performer and “Drag Race France” finalist Soa de Muse, as well as dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet, including stars Guillaume Diop and Germain Louvet. To all these are added the American musicians of the Wild Up and AMOC formations. And the whole is a tribute to Julius Eastman (1940-1990), queer Afro-American minimalist composer who died at the age of 50, forgotten by all, and author of the instrumental piece Gay Guerrilla.
Conceptual art, drag, classical dancers, avant-garde music, humor and seriousness, politics and futility. One could not find a better synthesis of the work of Gerard & Kelly, exhibited at the Carré d’Art, in Nîmes, at the beginning of 2023, who have been weaving for a few years, through performances and videos, a reflection on the little-known history of art and its links with architecture. In 2019, at the Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier’s masterpiece, they imagined a performance about the architect.
At the Glass House, in Connecticut, they evoked the couple formed by the former owners, the architect Philip Johnson and the curator David Whitney. At the Bourse de commerce-Collection Pinault in Paris, the links of the building renovated by Tadao Andō with colonial history inspired them.
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