The three languages of the project’s title indicate the itinerant and interdisciplinary nature of STILL_MÓVIL, an initiative of the London-based Italian-born artist Manuel Vason and the Red Suramericana de Danza. This is a project, which reunites within its essence two languages in constant dialogue: photography and dance. With the aim of transforming a dance piece or a live performance into stillness and image, Manuel Vason travelled across ten countries in South America during 2010 and 2011 and was in residences, in which he created collaborative work with fifty artists, choreographers and dancers. The result of this process is an unsettling creative material, which takes the form of a touring exhibition, a forthcoming publication that compiles the images created and a website which records the collaborative process.
Manuel Vason’s artistic practice explores the relationship between photography and performance, presence and representation. He considers the capturing of a moment as an act of creation, as a ritual towards the illusion of immortality and as an exchange between who is in front and who is behind the camera. The collaborative nature of his practice shapes a unique hybrid art form and forms new vocabularies. His collaborations to date have become some of the most iconic images of performance and his work has been published and presented internationally.
Vason was born in Padua, Italy in 1974. He discovered his interest in photography while working in a black and white professional darkroom. After having assisted some of the most celebrated fashion photographers of his generation in Milan, New York, Paris, London and Los Angeles, he decided to pursue a Masters degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins at the University of Arts in London. The focus of his research shifted from the body as subject into the relationship between photography and performance. In 2002 he presented two books: Exposures a publication on the body in Live Art (Black Dog Publishing, 2002) and Oh Lover Boy, a two-year collaboration with artist Franko B (Black Dog Publishing, 2002). In 2007 Vason’s first solo exhibition Encounters was presented accompanied by a 230 pages catalogue (Arnolfini/Cornerhouse). Vason is continuously developing a practice integrating different mediums and collaborative methods.
Manuel Vason: Still_Movil
From 24th April 2013
Casa O´Higgins
Lima, Peru
In collaboration with DANZA PUCP, the Dance Department of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
