Dr. Leontine Schelling
(2012, 2013, 2016, 2018)

Dr. Leontine Schelling is my alter ego, she gives guided tours, gives speeches and published a book about me in 2016 As a renowned art historian and art critic, the talented speaker succeeds in engaging her audience with her very own reality. With her performances, she anticipated recent political developments such as "fake news" and "alternative facts" in the context of art as early as 2012. The "true identity" of the performer is not communicated to the visitors, nor are they aware of the possible mixture of "facts" and "invented facts". At the moment of the performance, Leontine is more real than Yolanda Esther and the works of art that she constructs in front of her audience are just as real. In exhibition tours or speeches, she appropriates existing works or entire exhibitions and reshapes them to her liking using the means of communication. In every performance, Leontine points out the problematic connection between communication, manipulation and perception. After the performances, she always remains in the room for a while before disappearing and Yolanda reappears. In this way, attentive viewers and listeners would be able to discover the double identity. Leontine Schelling was created as part of a performance that I developed together with Lysann König for an exhibition in 2012: Based on Andrea Fraser's guided tour of the exhibition "Damaged Goods" at the New Museum of Contemporary Art NYC, 1986, Lysann König and I created alter egos and subsequently had them perform at seven guided tours. Since then, Leontine Schelling has also increasingly performed solo. Performances by Leontine Schelling: - The capital is gone. We are the capital! Laudatory speech at the opening of the exhibition in the former Hallen für Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen (2018) - Every contact leaves a trace, Kunsthalle Basel & Kasko (2016), reading from her book Identity and Gesture (2016) - Publication of her essay "Identität und Geste - Zum Werk von Yolanda Esther Natsch, Privatverlag (2016) - BeiSpiel, Forum Vebikus, Schaffhausen (2013): Speech for the exhibition of the artist Alexandra Meyer - REGIONALE 13, Haus für elektronische Künste Basel,hidden obvious, (2012/13): in collaboration with Lysann König / Franziska Stecher, three public guided tours - Chapter 3: Der Raum, Kaskadenkondensator Basel (2012): in collaboration with Lysann König / Franziska Stecher, four public guided tours