Biennial 2012: Dora Garcia & Laurence Payot in conversation

We filmed Spanish artist Dora Garcia talking to French (Liverpool based) artist Laurence Payot about the ups and downs of working with the public, and whether performance art is ‘real’ or ‘not real’ …

Dora’s Liverpool Biennial comission Outside!, based in the Bluecoat in collaboration with Peter Aers and Toxteth TV, got local residents to narrate their own stories of the city through an experimental street TV project and live talk show. Laurence Payot was the perfect artist to pair up with Dora for a conversation; using public performances, she  ’deliberately replicates things that happen by accident’.

Here they talk about Dora’s other artwork The Tunnel People (2000), where people or actors moved from one location to the next in a metro system in Brussels, performing different (sometimes scripted) activities and dialogue with fellow travellers. They also discuss whether it’s important or not that people realise a public intervention is ‘art’ or something that is ‘real’, and what happens when public artwork does not go to plan …

Produced for The Double Negative, filmed by Justin Lewis on behalf of the Biennial 2012 Volunteers Media Team.

Dora Garcia’s videos are on display at the Bluecoat gallery until the 25th November 2012

You can also see them through ToxtethComReporters YouTube Channel 

Interact with Laurence Payot’s newly commissioned illumination at Blackpool’s main North Pier, on display until 4th November 2012