In the classical age it was customary for the artist to oversee \u00adcelebrations or accompany public festivities, a tradition which modernity has taken over in its own right. Whether this regards the Venice carnival, the f\u00eates galantes<\/em> of the eighteenth century, the ephemeral festivities at the court of Versailles, those of Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin-Rouge, the masked balls and caf\u00e9-concerts organized by the Montparnasse \u00adartists or, last but not least, the Factory parties in New York City and psychedelic \u00adparties, all these are instances in which the artists join in the celebration, aesthetically revitalizing it, if not transcending it; contrary to the romantic standard of the melancholy or vain festivity, everything indicates that the artist is not necessarily the enemy of festivities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this matter, the contemporary period is characterized by \u00adcontinuity: the artist frequently displays his\/her interest in the \u00adfestive. However, \u00adliving art prefers to add a twist (acting as though<\/em>, all the while injecting a critical point of view behind the scenes), the celebration taken up by the artist today is often ambiguous: pure exaltation, dubious \u00adexpenditure or critical subject?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the second post-war years the \u201cfestive\u201d has been given form by various artists in various ways: aestheticized meals organized by Daniel Spoerri and Doroth\u00e9e Selz, pagan parties by the Viennese Actionists, playful and desacralizing ones by Fluxus, collective liberation sessions orchestrated by Jean-Jacques Lebel in his Parisian Festival de la Libre expression<\/em> events. . . to name but the most memorable among the \u00adfestive formats that usher in the contemporary age of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This festive inclination has not waned in the current period. It has merely led to a reconsideration of how the festive is viewed in a \u00adhistorical moment\u2014with postmodernism as its backdrop\u2014in which \u00adindividualism and the relativity of values were soon to triumph. Any celebration of \u00adanything whatsoever done in a collective manner and in the name of \u201cbeing together\u201d (be it a familial, friendly, social, political, commemorative, or of a symbolic nature) by this token becomes problematic: the collective party is evidently no longer primarily my party celebrated in the name of my values, but something else more general which does not necessarily concern me, or even concern me at all. In the 1990s, in a significant way Claude L\u00e9v\u00eaque and Sam Taylor presented videos or installations showing people dancing by themselves, imprisoned in their bubbles, partying for and by themselves. The same feeling of social dissociation and \u00addecoupling with the festive group presides over the famous (Untitled Go-Go Dancing Platform<\/em>) that Felix Gonzales-Torres displayed at the same time during several \u00adexhibitions: a gay club dancer wearing briefs, headphones over his ears, dances alone on a pedestal\u2014the metaphor for a lost party (\u00adcommunal festivity) and self-absorption as a privileged sphere of pleasure. And also what to say of Vanessa Beecroft\u2019s multiple regulated and interminable banquet servings, particularly when one compares their pleasure value with that of Spoerri or Selz\u2019s communal feasts thirty years earlier. This event, marked by a severity that has nothing coenobitical about it, was organized by Beecroft in 2003 at the Castello di Rivoli, for female models and personal friends (VB 52, twelve meals served over thirty-six hours, of which eleven were monochrome and the last, multicoloured): a heavy feast, preset like a ballet, and in which all communication between the guests seems to have been banished, all this in an atmosphere imbued by boredom and indolence\u2014the anti-party par excellence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another problem the end of the twentieth century artist must \u00adconfront is the new status passed on to the collective celebration. In regards to its organization, it escapes either voluntarism or individual \u00addecision-making, since it is frequently decided-seized by public \u00adauthorities. The implicit rule of this new festive regime is that it is the \u201cus-we\u201d who is invited to party all together, and no longer primarily the \u201cme-I\u201d when s\/he feels like it and with whomever s\/he chooses. The \u00adcelebration, this event that one could have viewed as occasional and related to small, \u00adtightly-knit groups\u2019 private pursuit of fun, this party that modernity \u00adsucceeded as best it could in removing from the traditional calendar of \u00adfestivities (\u00adreligious ones, such as the celebration of saints; commemorative ones which punctuate institutional political life) is now returning under the barely masked guise of the same, driven by power and viewed by it as an agent of \u00adcontrolled collective life. In fact, how can one judge certain events other than as so many tricks to force social catalysis or avoid its foundering? These events, remote-controlled in so far as is possible, that are the official Nuits Blanches<\/em> in Paris or elsewhere, the Zinneke Parade in Brussels, the Lyon F\u00eate des lumi\u00e8res<\/em>, the international soup festivals in Lille and in Berlin or other Transurbaines<\/em> from Saint-\u00c9tienne, all these are large-scale productions of the cultural industry which have nothing to do with an \u00adindividual festive initiative. This is a subtle form of contemporary \u00adoppression. The organizer has every chance of winning here: s\/he pleases and offers an occasion to relax and let go which is at the same time a means of easing political tensions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is patently obvious that nowadays the \u201ccelebration\u201d is no \u00adlonger simply good relaxation time: it has become a political stake. In the \u00adopinion of the technocrats of \u201curbanity\u201d the organization of a celebration is \u00adgenerally an opportunity to tighten the social bolts at minimum cost. No spontaneism, the contemporary party is a programmed and highly supervised event. The imperative of \u201ccommunicational action\u201d (J\u00fcrgen Habermas), the will to make one believe, at all cost, that there really is an indefectible social link between the residents of a given geographical zone, even if it is the place of all factual oppositions, have turned the party into the prime example of a mimicked sociality. Society is falling apart? Let\u2019s organize a party! From a technocratic and interventionist point of view a celebration is entirely beneficial. Everybody has fun, one forgets everything, like in the times of the historical carnival, starting with the usual social violence. What\u2019s more, the celebration has the welcome air of a non-ideological manifestation, it addresses all without distinction and without regard to class. When the subordinate parties with his boss to the bass drones or the rhythms of techno music, s\/he forgets the fact that by tomorrow all will be as before\u2014a return to business as usual, the all powerful hierarchy, social exploitation, wealth discrepancies, and class disdain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One may legitimately be weary of these types of festivity, and \u00adquestion their easy success (i.e., their frequently being for \u201cfree\u201d). But is this enough to declare them one\u2019s sworn enemy? Regardless of whether it may be steered by authoritarian interests, people generally acclaim such festivities. Nowadays, who would dare to criticize the F\u00eate de la Musique<\/em>\u2014a formula which has spread worldwide\u2014first established in France by the socialist minister Jack Lang? Actually, nobody is the answer. Consent and voluntary servitude is thus manufactured by stuffing the citizen with festive sweets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The alternative to the programmed and \u201csubmissive\u201d celebration are numerous, beginning with private parties where one celebrates what one wishes, and which have not disappeared, far from it. In terms of large-scale formats the most interesting since the 1990s is certainly the rave party, upheld for a long time by the crypto-anarchist and \u201c\u00adauto-monarchic\u201d (dixit Hakim Bey) thinking of the travellers. One set up camp here or there, wherever one\u2019s heart desires\u2014in an abandoned warehouse, a fallow field deep down on the Eure, on the edge of an ice field\u2014one turns on the sound and dances, one activates one\u2019s body just long enough to feel good, to let go of one\u2019s inner and social tensions, till exhaustion if one wants. The TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) that ravers create in their \u00adpassage \u00adjoyously shows the limits of societies of control: one can still thread one\u2019s way through the meshes, so as to organize and live one\u2019s own parties without prior authorization. This also holds for the Flash Mobs, these informal and festive gatherings of crowds contacted on the internet which appeared at the beginning of the 2000s: at this time and at such a place (usually public), let\u2019s all meet up to explode Coca-Cola bottles by \u00adfilling them with Mentos drops, to organize pillow or toilet paper roll fights, let\u2019s freeze on the spot without warning in the middle of the street and mimic an immobile body. Frozen Grand Central<\/em>, New York 2007: for about five minutes the participants of this singular happening in the big New York train station, stood still as a single group, as though they had been frozen on the spot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In terms of artistic production the limits of the rave or the Flash Mob may reside in their event-based nature, that of an ordinary performance, for as soon as the mathematical time of these ephemeral \u00admanifestation passes nothing remains but the memory and some images broadcast on YouTube. This event aspect doesn\u2019t at all bother the artist who organizes the party and who turns these moments into an art in and of itself, in the example of certain DJs and VJs whose activity is to turn the lived \u00adexperience of the mix, hands glued to the record player, into a highly aesthetic instant (in part, the activity of a Gerald Rockenschaub). However, it can also turn out to be a very frustrating experience as soon as one desires to both party and transmit a certain idea of celebration by conserving a useful trace of it once the projectors are shut off and the partiers return to non-festive activities. The work of art, in this case, does not suffice as an event, in the canonical sense given to this term by George Brecht in the 1960s: an action carried out in its own time by an executer, presented as a gesture, and then nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To put on one\u2019s own party as an artist. What\u2019s more, to celebrate it and also have it be something artistic that can be perpetuated, endure and constitute a \u201cparty memory.\u201d This is the axis chosen by, among \u00adothers, Pilar Albarrac\u00edn, a Spanish artist who exalts sexual or commemorative celebration. She is her own subject and lives her party in the manner of a performance, but she also makes a video of it that becomes the memory of an intimate party not to be forgotten for anyone\u2014the artist herself no more so than the viewers of her work. In many of her filmed performances Albarrac\u00edn freely portrays herself as an accomplished, strong woman, with a sexual or physical energy that nothing seems able to contain. La cabra \/The Goat <\/em> (2001), a short performance in which she dances like a maenad violently shaking a leaky wine skin, staining her clothes with the bacchanalian liquid in a moment of erotic exaltation, and leaving the spectator stunned\u2014the expression of furious and orgasmic energy. Another one of Albarracin\u2019s performances, Viva Espa\u00f1a \/ Long Live Spain<\/em> (2004), shows the artist walking confidently in the city, followed by a breathless brass band that does its best to follow her in her triumphal march. Albarrac\u00edn, who \u00adcelebrates herself (my bacchanalian orgasm dance, my triumphal march), in one sweep widens her intimate festive moments through their \u00adtransmission (once recorded) in image form\u2014what I communicate about my own party. Although grounded in a precise moment (the \u00admathematical time of execution), the festive expression she proposes to the \u00adspectator is \u00adperpetuated ad infinitum<\/em> on a demonstrative and exemplary mode, which follows up on the gesture\u2019s instantaneousness. This exposition in the strict sense (expositio<\/em>: that which is \u201cput into view\u201d) of the intense moment of an intimate celebration, paradoxically, takes on a social \u00addimension: I may be enjoying myself all by myself, Pilar Albarrac\u00edn seems to suggest, but nothing is stopping you from doing likewise. Just do as I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To experience a celebration in order to film it, to leave a trace, a proof, to transmit its nature, is an inclination one could hold to be \u00adproblematic. It means that the celebration does not suffice as an event lived just for itself, and that it can be more, all things considered, than itself. To turn \u00adcelebration into the object of an art is like creating a pretext to widen our view of celebration, which is no longer but a lived moment; or simply to push us, the viewers, to reflect about celebration itself, about the \u00adphenomenon it constitutes, by approaching it vicariously and in the second degree. I, as an artist, will show you my celebration so that you, as a viewer, can better evaluate the value of yours by comparison. This is without doubt, \u00adconsciously or not, the position defended by Elena Kovylina with Waltz<\/em> (2001). This work is nothing less than the proposition of a \u00addesperate party, of a joy foundering in distress and self-destructive \u00adpursuits. Kovylina publicly engages in a highly drunken and loose-tongued performance, in which she calls on the men in the audience to dance with her to the tune of the famous German song Lili Marlene<\/em> playing in a looped version. This Russian artist punctuates each dance with the regulated absorption of a class of vodka. Minutes pass and the dances follow one another, Kovylina, by now drunk, becomes unsteady in her movements. She sways, trying as best she can to hold on to her partner\u2019s neck as one would to a lifesaver, and she lets go and finally collapses. End of party. This is, no doubt, a transitive proposition. One that is conceived to be disseminated and to endow celebration with an equivocal image\u2014that moment when one wants to feel good but when the dark demons of our lives, thirsty for the absolute yet remaining disappointed, always get the better of us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An inflexion of the artist concerned by the \u201ccelebration\u201d and eager to make it more consistent, would consist, first of fall, in making clearer the idea of \u201ccelebration.\u201d To this end, what better way to proceed than to multiply celebrations and festive occasions? This multiplication of the festive sphere can involve the creation of a specific calendar for celebrations, in the spirit of Robert Filliou\u2019s pioneering steps who in the 1970s authoritatively designated a day in the calendar as being from here on \u201cArt\u2019s birthday\u201d (every January 17). This voluntarist method was to be relayed by Pierre Huyghe in 1995 as part of the brand new Association des Temps Lib\u00e9r\u00e9s. According to the regulations of this association, which at first gathered artists, the sought after goal is first of all sociological and political: \u201cthe development of unproductive time, towards a \u00adreflection on free time, and the development of a society without work.\u201d Acting within the framework of \u201cpublic meetings, conferences, \u00adpublications, parties. . .\u201d the Association des Temps Lib\u00e9r\u00e9s remains an artistic proposition, a seat of utopian aspirations. Actually, there is little chance that its \u00adrecommendations and hope for the proclaimed \u00adunproductive society will take shape in concrete organizations, however fruitful the \u00adbrainstorming it engages them in may be. What is important, however, is the \u00adreconsideration of the question of \u201ctime\u201d that such an endeavour establishes. If in this case the artist tackles the calendar, it is because s\/he feels that it is badly \u00adstructured and thought out. In this sense, the Association des Temps Lib\u00e9r\u00e9s was at the origin of a significant collective creation, One Year Celebration<\/em> (2003-2006) which set up, in the tradition of Filliou referred to above, a new celebration calendar (Andy Warhol day. . .) developed by \u00adartists, musicians and architects. This calendar, as one may guess, \u00adconsists of a factual proposition that has nothing in common with \u00adtraditional \u00adcalendars in which the figures or events celebrated are usually of religious origin or derive from political history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than betting on the organization of collective time and \u00adproclaiming a celebration calendar that would be difficult to have accepted, since its celebrations would likely be on the fringe and concern few people in the end run, the artist can decide to create celebrations directly. Celebrations, as one would suspect, that would be somewhat unusual. It is in this vein that Thierry Th\u00e9olier designed festive happenings between 1990 and 2000 that were highly singular and of which he was the grand organizer. The most famous of these was an orgy organized in Paris that has remained quite memorable. This \u201cTooz Art\u201d [tooz<\/em> derives from \u00adpartouze<\/em>, the French slang word for orgy. Translator\u2019s note], to be precise, is only one of the innovative aspects of the reworking of the notion of \u201ccelebration\u201d by the contemporary artist. Alexandre P\u00e9rigot, for example, organizes Air Guitar contests in his famous \u201cMaison D\u00e9monstration, Maison d\u2019Elvis,\u201d a full-scale replica of the King\u2019s Graceland mansion, which he installs here and there in Paris, in Thailand, or elsewhere. In New York the Polish artist Joanna Malinovska created a public performance titled Quintet for two violas<\/em>, two cellos, and a corpse<\/em>, a festive ceremony with a musical score and musicians in which the cadaver participated fully. One of the musicians remains immobile and silent since his score is blank (a composition by Masami Tomihisa, Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, March 2008). As for Andrea Mastrovito, he gathered several friends in 2008 at the Teatro dell\u2019Italian Academy of New York, where he replayed the rock group Queen\u2019s last concert (Wembley, 1986) in playback for 16 minutes using fake paper instruments. He himself played the role of his idol Freddie Mercury (Queen<\/em>, 2008)\u2014the party I couldn\u2019t make it to, that I couldn\u2019t experience, and which I therefore restage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The multiplicity of festivity registers staged or carried out de vivo<\/em> by contemporary visual artists suggests the following idea: the very notion of \u201ccelebration,\u201d as broad as it may be, must be broadened further still, stretched if necessary until it is re-conceptualized. Sandra Kranich and Cai Guo-Qiang, both fascinated by pyrotechnics, coordinate highly aesthetic fireworks, sometimes consciously presented in an imperfect manner, as Kranich wants it\u2014a celebration, yes, but one that avoids having spectators abandoning themselves to this pure contemplation, which distances from reality through bedazzlement and exaltation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing prevents the artist to be a thinker of celebrations, a theorist or craftsperson of the best possible party. An artist such as the American Marc Horowitz conceived his Center for Improved Living in this sense. In this creative laboratory where he leads every participant to create what s\/he wants by guiding and supporting his\/her process, one is only asked to be in a good mood, relaxed, and to create while amusing oneself to the accelerated rhythm of uproarious laughter. Euphoria reigns here, and it is not recommended for the overly serious: creation in and of itself can be a party. On the subject of rethinking celebration one can also make \u00adreference, on a more practical level, to Brian Eno\u2019s reflection on the matter. This acousmatic artist\u2014specialized in techno parties\u2014seeks to improve festive spaces in closed and noisy environments for the benefit of users. The developer of the Quiet Club, a chill out type space that is both simple (in its spatial organization) and sophisticated (in its sensible effects), Eno puts the function of the artist at the intersection of the inventor of forms, the aesthete and the physiologist. \u201cMost nightclubs are designed to stimulate you, to make you go faster, to excite you. I wanted a club that would calm me down, and leave me still and at peace with myself.\u201d His Quiet Clubs offer \u201can environment conducive to creative imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To conclude, the place of celebration as that of a self-fashioning is also that of an intimately lived sociality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [Translated from the French by Bernard Sch\u00fctze]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/67_DO02_Ardenne_Gonzalez-Torres_go-go-dancing-platform-scaled.jpg\")
Every Week There is Something Different<\/em>, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, 1991.
photo\u202f: Peter Muscato, permission | courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York \u00a9 The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nCelebration in the Post-modern Era<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/67_DO02_Ardenne_Beecroft_VB52_002_NT-scaled.jpg\")
Performance VB52<\/em>, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino, 2003.
photo\u202f: permission | courtesy Lia Rumma<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nA Party for Me First of All<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Is the Party Alone Enough?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/67_DO02_Ardenne_Albarracin_THE_GOAT-2.jpg\")
photos\u202f: permission de l’artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/67_DO02_Ardenne_Albarracin_THE_GOAT1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nFeast Is Mine, I Live It My Way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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photo\u202f: Richard Kempton, permission | courtesy Cai Studio
Cai Guo-Qiang, Transient Rainbow<\/em>, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002.
photo : Hiro Ihara, permission | courtesy Cai Studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nRethinking Celebration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/67_DO02_Ardenne_Horrowitz_me-and-you-show--scaled.jpg\")
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photos\u202f: Tim Noakes \/ SocialStereotype.com & Marc Horowitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n