Liv Schulman

Liv Schulman
Une vieille terre pour une nouvelle chanson qui sonne comme la vieille chanson avec le meme-meme et le vieux-vieux et rien de rien de rien de nouveau, 2023
video
40min 33sec

This fiction, filmed in Carnac in Brittany, France, shows a world where a group of household electric appliances have acquired, or are posessed, by a series of affects. 

Together they stage a version of a Victorian drama, a very free adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, where an air conditioner named AC suffers the adventures of being poor and orphaned in a loveless world in the midst of climate change.

Liv Schulman
Descartes-Borderline, 2023

Descartes-Borderline is a performance that takes place in a space made up of two cardboard walls. One wall features a series of holes from which objects and body parts emerge at various points during the performance. Other holes spit out objects of mass consumption such as a cell phone, cleaning products, soap, chewing gum, drool, smoke, trumpets, expired pills and coins. Between the first and second walls, the performer moves around and recounts the moment when she received a free diagnosis on the street, where a group of men, challenged her to call her a “Borderline”.

 

Liv Schulman
exhibition view Adidas, Jennifer, Ariel, Woolite, le Chat, la Croix, le Temps, la Sangsue, les Problèmes, la Transformation, l’Ennui, FRAC Bretagne, 2023

(photo Aurélien Mole)

Liv Schulman
exhibition view Adidas, Jennifer, Ariel, Woolite, le Chat, la Croix, le Temps, la Sangsue, les Problèmes, la Transformation, l’Ennui, FRAC Bretagne, 2023

(photo Aurélien Mole)


Liv Schulman
sans titre, 2023
tennis balls, wood, baguette, cigarettes, ham, resin
71 x 32 x 25 cm

Liv Schulman
exhibition view Adidas, Jennifer, Ariel, Woolite, le Chat, la Croix, le Temps, la Sangsue, les Problèmes, la Transformation, l’Ennui, 2023, FRAC Bretagne

(photo Aurélien Mole)

Liv Schulman
Tabouret 3, 2023
resin, baguette and papier maché
59 x 45 x 40 cm

Liv Schulman
Sur-vêtement, 2023
outwear and acrylic resin
85 x 37 x 11 cm

 

Liv Schulman
Brown, Yellow, White and Dead Dead, 2022

Paris + par Art Basel

Liv Schulman
Brown, Yellow, White and Dead Dead
photos : Courtesy of Paris+ par Art Basel

 

Liv Schulman
The New Inflation, 2022
exhibition view galerie anne barrault
(photo Aurélien Mole)

Liv Schulman
The New Inflation, 2022
exhibition view galerie anne barrault
(photo Aurélien Mole)

Liv Schulman
The New Inflation, 2022
exhibition view galerie anne barrault
(photo Aurélien Mole)

 

Liv Schulman Brown, yellow, white and dead, 2020 Video 4k, mini-série en 4 épisodes 22.10’, 16.59’, 13,29’, 18.49’ min

Liv Schulman Brown, yellow, white and dead, 2020 Video 4k, mini-série en 4 épisodes 22.10’, 16.59’, 13,29’, 18.49’ min

Two film producers, an artist, and an unemployed actor are making a horror film. Its protagonists are a group of neighbors who retreat to the basement of their building out of sheer enthusiasm for homebrewing and Tupperware, where they bring a monster to life.

With its cardboard set and its home-made costumes, this miniseries, is itself an example of such DIY entrepreneurialism. In work and brainstorming meetings, the male fantasy of perfect consumption gives rise to a giant leech who seduces the women and forces the men to question their sexuality.

Liv Schulman, 2020

 

Liv Schulman Eurropa, 2021 Video 4K 150min, sawed chairs, metal bars, artisanal paper, tennis balls, uniforms, iron, screens and video projectors
Exhibition view, Crac Alsace (solo), curated by : Elf Turpin, Altkirch, France 2021
image © : Aurélien Mole

“Argentine artist Liv Schulman is known for making videos with narratives that explore subjects as diverse as the economy, the conditions of creation and the processes of alienation. For last year’s edition of steirischer herbst, for instance, she produced Brown, Yellow, White and Dead (2020) – a four-part video series addressing the phenomenon of the prosumer. In Eurropa, Schulman’s current exhibition at CRAC Alsace, the artist responds to Altkirch’s location on the border of three European countries: France, Germany and Switzerland.

For the show, the artist produced the titular, site-specific video installation Eurropa (2021), which imagines a fictional Europe after the demise of the European Union and the border-free Schengen area initiated in 1995.

Liv Schulman A Somatic Play, 2019 Video 4k, 29.25′ min

“(…) The basement conversation, in fact, started back in 2019 when I invited Liv Schulman to participate in the exhibition The knife without a blade that lacks a handle at CRAC Alsace. She exhibited A Somatic Play, which, continuing her body of work titled Goubernement, presented six stateless border agents interpreted by a single actress who performed the border through a series of questions, behaviors, and control techniques. A few months later, in spring 2020, governments kept us at home to face an uncontrollable coronavirus epidemic which jumped from one body to the next. Suspended free circulation, closed European borders, and a shriveling vital space. In France, this meant forbidding venturing beyond a one-kilometer radius and a one-hour duration. An experiment in self-coercion. Border agents without costumes but documents and forms.”

Elfi Turpin, press release Eurropa, CRAC Alsace, February 2021. In present-day Mexico City, borders no longer take place and are scattered everywhere, creating cracks in the social and commercial fabric of the city. A group of six customs agents interpreted by the same actress are placed on these invisible borders regulating the fows of anxiety, eroticism, languages, formal and informal trade. Liv Schulman, 2019.

Liv Schulman Le Goubernement, 2019 Video 4k, series of 6 episodes 07.26’, 30.50’, 16.34’, 08.27’, 21.32′, 09.04′ min

This six-episode fiction imagines the destiny and work of women, lesbian, queer, trans and non-binary artists who lived in Paris from 1910 – 1980.

“(…) The result is wonderfully absurd. First of all, it is very funny, a chiseled writing whose punchlines we catch on the fly while browsing the exhibition. The g-films are next to each other, on suspended screens or in the room, in a scenography space partitioned by walls of clothes (those worn by the spectators) and seats invaded by sulky excrescences.

<p “>Liv Schulman, as we realized during the last edition of the Fondation Ricard prize, in September, of which she was the winner with her previous series Control, succeeds in the tour de force of making people laugh (and not snigger) while talking about art, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Most of these witty lines, however, are not unattainable without a target. Whether masculinity is a “Dadaist performance” (“MDF dicks, polyurethane dicks, recycled cardboard dicks”) and the avant-garde “the souvenir gift of a beautiful party to which one is not invited”, laughter becomes the Trojan horse of my claim to an inclusive re-reading of history.

Liv Schulman brings however a treatment looking as much towards the past and the repair as towards the present and the invention.

We know, among feminist theorists, the importance of unraveling the chronology, embodied in particular by Monique Wittig with the concept of “epic”, designating the circularity of the myth, or more recently, by Renate Lorenz, in that of “transemporeal drag”. Less evoked, however, is the materialist approach, also central to the work of these two authors, consisting in detaching it from the biological assignment (“woman”) to sort it out towards a genealogy of the socially constructed domination.

In Le Goubernement, the various episodes condense seven decades into a single present. In a cryptic way, a line from a logorrheic monologue points out the idea: “The singularity has never existed, it has simply found an imaginary form of regulation in several times. And the thing advanced from underneath like a vibrator. In women’s feathers, the soles of their shoes, and Tupperware instructions sold at home.”

To put it more prosaically, Liv Schulman looks beyond the biographical storytelling often required when (re)discovering forgotten artists of modernity. In doing so, she steps over the pathos of the small story and puts her foot down, unearthing underneath the personal trajectories the economic, social and ideological superstructures responsible for exclusion, the very ones that allow us to generalize and synthesize so many lives into a few ventriloquist spokespersons on the road to freedom – and trying to be free at all.”

Ingrid Luquet-Gad, les Inrockuptibles, septembre 12, 2019. Liv Schulman Le Goubernement, 2019 textils, platforme, acrylic resin, cables, pvc, televisions, projection Installation view, Villa Vassilieff, Paris 2019

Liv Schulman Le Goubernement, 2019 Six channel installation, flat screens, headphones, ceramics, textiles, expanding foam, enamel Installation view, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska, USA 2020

Liv Schulman Formal Economy, 2018 Performance, 23′ min Alt_Cph, Copenhague, mai 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYt1ZwHdn2E&ab_channel=LivSchulman

Liv Schulman L’Obstruction, 2017 Video 4k, 26.03′ min

The film L’Obstruction centers around a character who constantly finds himself in situations of verbal and physical blockage. L’Obstruction addresses the impossibility of critical public speech and the subsequent anxiety it generates. The struggle with language and meaning is experienced by the character in the film – stuck between a strong intent and a delivery of mumbles and sentences – brings his sweating body and emotional state to an absurd point of crisis, pointing awith a biting humour to the affects conveyed by the current neoliberal context.

The bodies of the silent listeners join the city’s overwhelmingly desirable and literally hot presence. Their gazes, whether apathetic, intense or mocking (depending on our level of paranoia), add to the increasing temperature obstructing the speaker’s ability to touch the audience and deliver what he refers to as an important educational discourse.

Trying to make sense, he holds on to a broken speech navigating anecdotes about worker conditions and comments on economy, supply and demand, desire and politics. Sex plays as metaphor of the disruption: directly, through the unavoidable and comical presence of the monuments’ curves, their genitals carved in stone, the oversized calf from a copy of the infamous ‘David’ (that the character comes close to hugging), but also through the surrounding pulse of the city that parasitize thoughts with excitement, urges, images, and power.

Céline Kopp, 2017.

Liv Schulman Control a TV Show : La Resistencia Taxista, 2016 saison III, épisode III, vidéo 4k, 9.27′ min

Control is a television series on art and writing in which a recurrent character, a sort of detective wanders between episodes attempting to establish new relations of meaning. Control is a mystery series, on the biggest mystery of all: one that can be led without an object.

At this moment, Control counts with three complete seasons. It was shot in Paris, Buenos Aires, Mar Del Plata, Tel Aviv et Rennes. It is broadcasted in art venues and televisions.

Liv Schulman, 2016.

Que Faire ?, 2018 Coproduction : Centre d’art La Galerie de Noisy-le-Sec et Parc Saint léger – Centre d’art contemporain 2 colors  Riso, 80 p., 13,6 x 18,2 cm

In Que Faire ? a group of writers are desperate for ideas, or any way to salvage their work through emotions and private language. Locked in the Writer’s Room, or perhaps an empty workshop in their former employer’s office, their activity is as much a brainstorming session as it is group therapy or an innovative form of collective unemployment. A distant echo of Lenin’s famous political treatise, this new Que Faire ? tackles the question of work head-on when it is associated with the contemporary imperative of creativity. The title resounds with the force of a cry of distress: What to do (how to create) when bodies are devalued, reduced to a state of radical frustration and anxiety? The text probes the inability to know what to do when the inner life, the main source of productive work, is overtaken by nervous breakdown; in so doing, it also explores the plastic nature of language and the transformative power of the word.

Que Faire ? was originally a television mini-series written and directed by Liv Schulman in collaboration with a team of amateur actors. The print version of this series is the result of a collaboration with graphic designer Roxanne Maillet.

Liv Schulman Que Faire ? Episode 3 “La Fantasie” , 2017 Video HD, 33′ min

“Que Faire?” Is a mini-TV series in 3 episodes about a group of tv writers suffering from a severe writer’s block. Shot with a group of local amateur actors this project focuses on the exchangeable power of spoken word and its transformative nature. The group searches desperately for ideas, they look for a way to save their jobs through the use of language and private emotions. They go to group therapy, they lock themselves in the writer’s room and they live their collective unemployment in an empty studio of the former Company. In Que Faire? the power of the collective works as a lonely psychotic voice.

The city of Noisy-le-Sec where I have lived as an artist in residency becomes the ground of this fiction and integrates the inhabitants as actors, the activity and the municipal places of the city, gathering and re-inventing the notions of inspiration and creativity at work.

1-Que Faire Episode 1 “Le Realisme” Video HD 29′ min. 2- Que Faire Episode 2 “La Fantaisie” Video HD 33′ min. 3-Que Faire Episode 3 “Les Dechets” Video HD 47′ min. Liv Schulman, 2017.

Liv Schulman Que Faire ?, 2017 textiles 4 x 7,60 m installation view : La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Noisy-Le-Sec image © : Pierre Antoine

Liv Schulman relied on the practices of amateur actors∙trices, using different locations in the city of Noisy-le-Sec as settings for the three episodes of her series Que faire? She displaced these people in a dystopian fiction centered on the world of work and the figure of the writer. Their words (like her writing), jerky and in tense flow, spoken in turn by dissonant characters, reveal a collective psychosis crystallized around a common malaise: the lack of inspiration, the absence of desire, the relegation to the closet… “One for all and all for one” could be their motto, but it is a losing motto that sinks them into a collective stagnation with no way out. They will end up merging into one collective body in the exhibition where a heavy curtain gathers their costumes, frozen bodies, again prevented in their vague attempt to move.

La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec 2017.

Liv Schulman was born in 1985. She grew up in Buenos Aires and lives in Paris.

After studying at the École nationale supérieure d'arts of Cergy, she was trained at Goldsmiths University of London and at the Beaux-Arts in Lyon for a postgraduate program.
Her work was presented at the CRAC Alsace, Bemis Art Center, Fondation Ricard, the Rennes Biennial (curated by François Piron), at the Galerie, Centre d'art contemporain, in Noisy-le-Sec (curated by Vanessa Desclaux & Emilie Renard), and at the SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen ("The Obstruction", curated by Celine Kopp).

In 2019, she received the Fondation Ricard Prize awarded to her on the occasion of the exhibition "Le Vingtième Prix de la Fondation d'entreprise Ricard", conceived by Neil Beloufa, and presented a solo exhibition at the Villa Vassilieff (curated by Mélanie Bouteloup and Émilie Bouvard).
In 2022, Liv Schulman was a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome. In 2023, she presented a solo show at FRAC Bretagne entitled "Adidas, Jennifer, Ariel, Woolite, le Chat, la Croix, le Temps, la Sangsue, les Problèmes, la Transformation, l'Ennui".

Liv Schulman and Pauline Ghersi will present a program of three performances in 2024 and 2025 at the Pernod Ricard Foundation, Paris.

Solo exhibitions

2021

MARRÓN, AMARILLO, BLANCO Y MUERTO | Piedras, Buenos Aires

Eurropa | Commissariat : Elfi Turpin | CRAC Alsace, Altkirch

2020

The Goubernment | Commissariat : Sylvie Fortin | Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA

An international subconscious awareness of capitalism | AplusA gallery, Venise

2019

A somatic play | Art : Concept Gallery, Paris

Control a TV Show Season III | Centre Pompidou, Paris

Le Goubernement | Commissariat : Melanie Bouteloup et Camille Chenais | Villa Vassilieff, Paris

Comercio Interior | Laboratorio, Buenos Aires

2018

“Los accidentes laborales” | Piedras Gallery, Buenos Aires

Nuestro propio pordiosero, Performance at Una fuerza Posible | Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid

Our Private Union. Performance in the frame of the public program Lust For Dust| Tampered Emotions, Marseille

Formal Economy | Alt_Cph, Copenhague

2017

The Night Shift | Zoo Galerie, Nantes

The Obstruction | Commissariat : Celine Kopp | SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen

2015

The Covensky Method IV | Verbo Performance Festival, Vermelho Gallery, Sao Paulo

Control Season II | Big Sur Gallery, Buenos Aires

2014

El Método Covensky III A prehistoric record | Matienzo Art Centre, Buenos Aires

El Método Covensky I A recess without reconstruction | Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires

2013

Splendour | Museum of Contemporary Energy, Buenos Aires

Group exhibitions

2022
Chien | Galerie anne barrault – Paris | Curated by: Manon Haize
The Baroness | Mimosa House, Londres, Royaume-Uni
Drawing Now, Paris | le Carreau du Temple, Paris

2021
La Larva y el Pantano | Fundacion Andreani, Buenos Aires | Curated by: Mercedes Claus

Buffon & Carson (la Suite) | Galerie anne barrault, Paris

Le juste Prix | Commissariat : Bertrand Dezoteaux | Fondation Pernod-Ricard, Paris

2020

Brown Yellow White Dead | Steirischer herbst ’20 : Paranoia TV, Graz

Tres Palomitas: Socially distanced lesbian cruising pre-warming for the upcoming world we want | Daad Galerie, Berlin

2019

Le couteau sans lame et dépourvu de manche | Commissariat : Elfi Turpin | Crac Alsace, Altkirch

Une journée avec Marie Vassilief | Fondation des artistes (MABA), Nogent sur Marne

2018

20ème Prix de la Fondation d’entreprise Ricard | Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris

The Fatala Momentet | Växjö Konsthall, Sweden

Perdon por ser Tan Sensual | Feria Ch.a.Co, Santiago de Chile

Vos désirs sont les nôtres | Commissariat : Celine Kopp & Marie de Gaulejac | La Tour-Panorama, Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille

Democracia en Obra | Centro Cultural Kirschner, Buenos Aires

The map is the Territory | Bregenz Biennale, Bregenz

2017

The Empathy Performance at the Cut the Gap seminar | SMK, Copenhague

Sans bride, ni mors, ni rênes | Commissariat : Doriane Spiteri | Rennes

Buenos Aires Young Art Biennale | Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires

Tes Mains Dans Mes Chaussures #3 | Commissariat : Vanessa Desclaux & Emilie Renard, La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec

2016

Incorporated! Biennale de Rennes | Commissariat : François Piron | Halle de la Courrouze, Rennes

Bienal del Pensamiento Paralelo | Commissariat : Marcelo Galindo | Buenos Aires

2015

La menor Resistencia | Nora Fish Gallery, Buenos Aires

2014

Performaton | Commissariat : Javier Villa | Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires

2013

Un Mundo que se Acuerda a Nuestros Deseos | Commissariat : Camila Telléz | Mite Gallery, Buenos Aires

New Economy | Commissariat : Claudio Iglesias | Alberto Sendrós Gallery, Buenos Aires

Fundación Vairoletto | Commissariat : Lucrecia Palacios | Faena Art Centre, Buenos Aires

XIV National Fine Arts Salon of Rosario | Rosario

Visite Israel- Visite Palestina | Metrónomo Gallery, Buenos Aires

 

Filmography

2024
Un circulo que se fue rodando, Video 4K, 33 minutes, color and sound film

2023
une vieille terre pour une nouvelle chanson qui sonne comme la vieille chanson avec le meme-meme et le vieux-vieux et rien de rien de rien de nouveau, Video 4K, 40 minutes and 33 secondes, color and sound film

2022
The New Inflation, 4K video, 63 minutes and 43 secondes, color and sound film
Brown, Yellow, White and Dead Dead, 4K video, 66 min, color and sound film
Persona, HD video, 16 min, color and sound film

2021
Eurropa (Saint Marin, Monaco, Luxembourg, Andorre, Liechtenstein, Suisse), HD video, miniseries of 9 episodes, 150 min total, color and sound film

2020
Brown, yellow, white and dead, 4K video, miniseries of 4 episodes, 72min total, color and sound film

2019
Le Goubernement, HD video, miniseries of 6 episodes, 93:43 min au total, color and sound film
A Somatic Play, HD video, 32 min, color and sound film

2018
Polis+Polis, HD video, 38:22 min, color and sound film

2017
L’Obstruction, HD video, 26:03 min, color and sound film
Que Faire?, HD video, miniseries of 3 episodes, 80 min total, color and sound film

2016
Control Season 3 (2016 – 2017), HD video, miniseries of 6 episodes, 48:79 min total, color and sound film
Assemblée Générale, HD video, 38min, color and sound film

2013
Control Season 2 (2013 – 2014), HD video, miniseries of 7 episodes, 47 min total, color and sound film
La desaparición, HD video, 59min, color and sound film

2011
Control Season 1, HD video, miniseries of 7 episodes, 23:16 min total, color and sound film

 

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Selected Screenings

2024
Marseille International Film Festival, FID, France.
Cinéma L’archipel. Paris, France.
2022
Festival de film de la Villa Médicis, Rome, Italy
Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard, Paris, France
Marseille International Film Festival, FID, France.
Cinéma L’archipel. Paris, France.
2020
steirischer herbst. Graz, Austria.
2019
Schirn Francfort. Double feature. Germany.
Prospectif Cinéma. Centre Pompidou. Paris. France.
Mac Marseille. Control épisodes 2 et 3 Season 3. France.
2017
Que Faire?#2 Khiasma. Les Lilas. France.
2016
Control a TV Show. Television de Rennes. France.
Screening of La Desaparicion In Extenso. Clermont Ferrand, France.
Screening of Assamblée Generale. Cac La Galerie de Noisy-le-Sec. France.
Screening of Assémblée Generale. Musée des Confluences. Lyon. France.
2015
Screening of La Desaparicion Museo de La Democracia. Montevideo, Uruguay.

 

 

Collections

Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou
Centre National des Arts Plastiques, CNAP
FRAC île de france
FRAC Lorraine
FRAC-Artothèque Nouvelle Aquitaine
Collection Oxenford (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Collection départemental d’art contemporain de la Seine-Saint-Denis

Grants and residencies

Villa Medici. 2022-2023. It
Mondes Nouveaux. 2021. Fr.
Bourse ADAGP-Villa Vassilieff. Fr. 2019. Fr.
20^th Fondation Ricard Price. 2018. Fr.
Premio Planta. Ch.a.Co Santiago de Chile. Ch.
Premio Bienal de Arte Joven. 2017. Hangar Barcelona. Es.
Residences secondaires Parc St Leger. Fr.
Mécènes du Sud. France. Fr.
Bourse regional PACA . Triangle France. Marseille. Fr.
DRAC Ile-de-France – La Galerie Noisy-le-sec. Fr.
Vairoletto Art Foundation. Buenos Aires. Ar.
Fondo Nacional de Las Artes. Buenos Aires. Ar.
Beca de Viaje Colección Alec Oxenford. Ar.

Art Press*May 2023 / text by Catherine Francblin

Zerodeux / text by Pierre Ruault
https://www.zerodeux.fr/reviews/liv-schulman-au-frac-bretagne/

Les Inrockuptibles /text by Ingrid Luquet-Gad
https://www.lesinrocks.com/arts-et-scenes/les-5-expos-a-ne-pas-rater-en-avril-2022-460740-08-04-2022/

Art Press*April 2022 / text by Catherine Francblin
https://www.artpress.com/2022/04/28/liv-schulman-the-new-inflation/

El Flasherito
http://flasherito.com.ar/

La Belle Revue / text by Sophie Lapalu https://www.labellerevue.org/fr/focus/2017/liv-schulman-paranoia-epidemique
Zerodeux / text by Patrice Joly http://www.zerodeux.fr/specialweb/entretien-avec-liv-schulman7

Fondation Ricard / text by Marion Vasseur Raluy
http://marionvasseurraluy.com/writing/liv-schulman-catalogue-fondation-ricard/

Künsten / text by Lise Grüner Bertelsen
https://kunsten.nu/journal/liv-schulman-intet-er-entydigt/

El Granotro / text by Guadalupe Creche
https://elgranotro.com/liv-schulman/

Les Inrocks / text by Ingrid Luquet-Gad
https://livschulman.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/liv-schulman_le-goubernement_les-inrocks.pdf

Zerodeux / text by Guillaume Laserre https://www.zerodeux.fr/news/liv-schulman/

Frieze / text by Oriane Durand
https://www.frieze.com/article/liv-schulman-crac-alsace-2021-review

Art Viewer / text by Elfi Turpin
https://artviewer.org/liv-schulman-at-crac-alsace/

Centre Pompidou
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/media/uB7lfMD