Fri 29 September 2023
Reset — Installation — 19:00
Disciplinary Technique(s) is an installation featuring video and recontextualised objects in a scenography activated by live-performed modules, all of which can and should adapt to the exhibition spaces and contexts in which they are presented. Sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, the conventions employed by all parts are derived from the disciplinary protocols associated with sports techniques in service of proposing new ones.
Vincent Clavaguera
Piersten Leirom
Disciplinary Technique(s) — Belgium — 2023 — ongoing'
Disciplinary Technique(s) is an installation featuring video and recontextualised objects in a scenography activated by live-performed modules, all of which can and should adapt to the exhibition spaces and contexts in which they are presented. Sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, the conventions employed by all parts are derived from the disciplinary protocols associated with sports techniques in service of proposing new ones.
Calling out normalization and gender bi-categorization central in sports, the installation erects new statues by challenging the idea of champion and myth of gender and instead proposing a more fluid and anarchic model. Disciplinary Technique(s) most centrally explores sociologist Pirkko Markula’s analysis of the power structures and roles that result from these protocols: « The disciplinary techniques employed within sport settings, can help create normalized athletes and champions, but can also produce a multitude of subject positions such as: losers, benchwarmers, social players, tomboys, queers, sports drop-outs, cheats, the lackadaisical, unfit, unskilled, disabled, injured and, of course, ill-disciplined. » (Markula, Pirkko. Foucault, Sport and Exercise: Power, Knowledge and Transforming The Self. Ed. Routledge, 2006). We intentionally honor these castaway anti-hero subjects through placing them in the limelight, instead of the typical reigning champion.
Our piece employs the power dynamics of city spaces and architecture to mirror how the sportive body similarly goes through varying states of construction and dilapidation, isolation and relation, useful performance and eventual retirement. Every element of this installation is derived from varying aspects of city development and decay, from our use of literal building materials, to juxtaposing the settings of construction sites with disused and abandoned spaces. We explore the grey area between the significance of revered ruins reminiscent of past grandeur and the conflicted shame of discarded emergency architecture which was constructed solely for near-instantaneous value generation. Not only do we probe these themes metaphorically, but also investigate how these spaces themselves can be the very tools our aforementioned castaway subjects — oftentimes people from underprivileged areas— use for political self-empowerment. By reclaiming these spaces through their own bodily activities, such as crossfit or street workouts, new champions may emerge.
Disciplinary Technique(s) is a contemporary arena where the representations of relentless anti-heroes lie and defy, to underline the urgency of reviewing the discourse of normalizing techniques within sports practice.
Vincent Clavaguera and Piersten Leirom work as dancers, performers and visual artists. They are intrinsically motivated to explore this subject, as both were perpetually confronted by these very protocols within sport during their choreographic training — scrutinizing and perfecting their weight, appearances, masculinity, and behavior along these prescriptions. Thus, the artists lend their personal perspective to the research.
