What’s Going On? Parade: Lieven De Boeck

Friday, December 1

11 am

Free for All

Marcy & Michael Klein Plaza | Sarasota Art Museum

The parade What’s Going On? is a performance orchestrated in celebration of mixed gender and queer identity, encouraging its performers and audience to participate and experience art through queerness.

As an animated situation, its presence is intended to be a sudden and dynamic moment of confusion, a lively and wondrous agitation among people in a public space. Performers will wear custom made costumes, carry celebratory objects and banners, and be accompanied by musicians. Each costume will represent different gender and queer identities and are designed to be worn in a type of ritual dance. Members of the public are invited to join in on the festivities by donning the special costumes.

The parade conceptually engages with the work of the Brazilian artists Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, and explores art as an interactive experience that can only happen through personal activation.

The performance and costumes were developed in close collaboration with Ringling College of Art and Design faculty and students over the course of three months.

What’s Going On? is the final form of research for The Archive of Disappearance, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, developed at the Hortense Research Centre of the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta of the ULB (Free University of Brussels).

Production is supported by Frédéric de Goldschmidt. The project is organized in collaboration with PresentFuture and has the support of the Flemish Community, Department of Culture, Youth and Media.

Models with costumes in the Botanical Garden
Costumes in the Botanical Garden

Try-out of some costumes in the Botanical Garden in Brussels Featuring Lieven De Boeck, Emma Revest, Rachael Moore, and Shane McCollam Photo by Bryn Verbeken

About Lieven De Boeck

Lieven De Boeck studied architecture at Luca School of Arts, Brussels. After his studies, he started working as a visual artist, activating architectural concepts as means of communicating or representing identity and authorship. His works focus on the relationship between the artist and the audience, and explores themes like identity, sexuality, decolonization, and cultural diversity.

In his most recent work, he explores how gender identity can be represented in a formal way. Shouldn’t such an identity rather be represented as something fluid, changing, and if so, what formal features should such a representation have? His response can be found in the exploration of concepts such as identity and language and activation and participation.

Lieven De Boeck has had significant solo and group exhibitions at renowned institutions worldwide having been included in the Florence Biennale and Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art). His work has been documented in several articles and in the monographic publication titled “X,” edited by Onomatopee. He is currently represented by Meesen De Clercq art gallery in Brussels.

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