Jean-Philippe Convert

In his performance work, Jean-Philippe Convert (b. 1972) questions the mechanisms of memory through  oral and written narrations. The project Conversations  was a series of public meetings which aim was to pass on an oral memory of events, stories or details related to well-known artworks or artists’ biographies like Yves Klein or Lygia Clark.

L’Entité Raspail (a project in collaboration with curator Damien Airault) is a series of “situations” taking place  every two months in the Square Jacques Antoine, Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. At every meeting, the audience experiences a sort of “gap” into the space and time of the city. An empty space excavated in the urban gap of the Place Denfert-Rochereau, which only historical presence, the bronze of Raspail, has been melted during WW2 leaving a naked pedestal, Square Jacques Antoine becomes a space to remember Paris history, to refer to the film Le Pont du Nord by Jacques Rivette which beginning is shot in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, to play  micro-actions and, eventually, to create new social relationships. 

Convert’s latest project develops these reflections in the space of writing. These micro-narratives are fragments describing actions the artist has seen, read or recalled. Le Livre des employés is primarily a book, but the project continues on the Internet: the artist juxtaposes some images, videos, etc., to the narrations, creating multiple compositions of sense.