Futurespectives - Performing the Louise Guerra Archive
(2018)

FUTURESPECTIVES - Performing the Louise Guerra Archive explores the idea of a retrospective of Louise Guerra (2013-2017), with an exhibition contribution that develops in situ. FUTURESPECTIVES will be characterized by invited guests who will show reenactments, negotiations and performances on Louise Guerra's Chapters on several occasions. A digital archive of Louise Guerra's works, research material and documentation will be created in advance, which the invited artists and theorists will work with. A table display case with previously unpublished documentary material on Louise Guerra will be presented in the exhibition space and an information text on FUTURESPECTIVES - Performing the Louise Guerra Archive will be displayed on one wall. The rest of the room serves as a "stage" for the reenactments and is filled with the relics and props of the interventions, which may also come from Louise Guerra's archive, for the duration of the exhibition.
The title FUTURESPECTIVES questions the form of the retrospective as a look back at a subject's artistic career and contrasts it with a future-oriented, performative practice that focuses on the collectivity and continuity of artistic confrontation. Last but not least, it is about thematizing the future practice of archiving and the questions of relevance and historiography it contains. How non-human, fictional, collective and immaterial "legacies" are to be dealt with in the future and how such (artistic) positions find their way into "history" is a political and topical question that perhaps finds its answer precisely in the concept of the exhibition République Géniale. The revival of ideas and strategies by artists such as Robert Filliou reinforces the importance of positions that cannot be assigned to a single artistic field and whose concepts address social and collective issues; Louise Guerra's work is part of such an artistic tradition.