If Julia Borderie has been drawn to basketball since graduating from Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al in 2015, it\u2019s not out of a passion for sports. What fascinates her about this discipline is primarily how it, as an action, engages the entire body in the face of a mediatory object, the ball. Secondly, it\u2019s the social dimension of the game that appeals to her, the very opposite of the strict vision of a solitary artist creating for a select public. In sports culture, people from diverse backgrounds meet for a specific time to support and encourage a team that is thus transformed into a collective body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Borderie created Tripple Dribble<\/em> at the Darling Foundry in 2015, she and the players came up with simple rules for this collaborative performance: during a game between two teams, when a basket was scored, an object was placed on the court where the shot had been taken, resulting in a series of sculptures. For this first performance, each object was provided by the users of the exhibition space (artists, employees, and others) and modified according to safety standards imposed by the players. In later iterations of the performance in the Parisian suburbs of Ivry-sur-Seine and Vitry-sur-Seine (2018), Borderie collaborated with new players and another artist, C\u00e9cile Bouffard, with whom she designed these objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Borderie is currently working on creating an obstacle course with children from a primary school in Saint-Denis, France: it involves inventing new rules for a game with no winners or losers and imagining ways to overcome numer\u00adous obstacles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Borderie envisages sport from a perspective that is as playful as it is political: by opposing the idea of an autonomous and untouchable work and the notion of performance as a purely elitist and intellectual art, she uses sport as a pivot for exhilarating collective action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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