Underneath the lengthy title of Éric Baudelaire's new film are three short films that evoke the figure of avant-garde composer Alvin Curran and his relationship with Rome, where he settled in the mid-1960s and created music mainly within the Musica Elettronica Viva collective. The short films tell the story of Rome during turbulent times marked by the kidnapping of Aldo Moro and the revolutionary struggles of the late 1970s. The last film's subtitle, "of about Alvin Curran," suggests that it is both a portrait and a collaboration. Alvin Curran justified a musical art free from scores and focused on collaborative and performative processes in reaction to the political climate of the time. In a deliberately political manner and in collaboration with the oeuvre he documents, Éric Baudelaire plays down the figure of the author and the idea of art as the expression of a singular voice. The film ends and restarts three times, with the certainty that by replaying the end, everything can begin again.
Éric Baudelaire is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris. After training as a political scientist, Baudelaire established himself as a visual artist with a research-based practice in several media ranging from photography and the moving image to installation, performance, and letter writing. His work probes a reality shaped by the systems of representation that structure contemporary societies: political, judicial, economic, and informational constructs. His feature films are shown in festivals as well as exhibitions, where they are presented within broader installations that include other works, archival documents, and extensive public programs. He has had exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Kunsthalle St Gallen; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Bergen Kunsthall; (formerly known as) Witte de With, Rotterdam; Bétonsalon, Paris; Fridericianum, Kassel; Beirut Art Center; Gasworks, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and showed work in the Whitney Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Yokohama Triennale, Mediacity Seoul, and Taipei Biennial. He was the recipient of the 2019 Marcel Duchamp prize, and recently published a monography titled Make, Do, With at Paraguay Press.
On Monday, 08 May 2023, a screening of the film When There is No More Music to Write (And other Roman Stories) will take place at 7 pm in the Aula of the Städelschule.
On Tuesday, 09 May 2023, Éric Baudelaire will give a lecture, also at 7 pm in the Aula of the Städelschule.
Both the film and the lecture will be in English.