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Claire Tancons Has Pioneered Processional Performance As A Claire Tancons has pioneered processional performance as a critique of the exhibitionary complex and transformed such iconic public spaces as Gwangju’s May 18 Democratic Square, Cape Town’s Company Gardens, Göteborg’s Götaplatsen and Kungsportavenyn, Venice’s calli and campi and New Orleans backstreets and, also, Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, into sites of experimental participatory performance. Trained as a curator and art historian, Tancons practices curating as an expanded creative field and experiments with the political aesthetics of walking, marching, second lining, masquerading and parading. Tancons has curated for established and emerging international biennials and was the associate curator for Prospect.1 New Orleans (2007-09); a curator for the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008); a guest curator for CAPE 09 – the second Cape Town Biennial; an associate curator for research for Biennale Bénin (2012); and a curator for the 7th Göteborg Biennial (2013). She has also initiated collaborative projects across diverse curatorial platforms, tackling several aspects of public ceremonial culture with FAR FESTA: Nuove Feste Veneziane (with curatorial collective CAKE AWAY; IUAV University and Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice, 2013); Public Practice (with Delaney Martin; New Orleans Airlift, 2014); and EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean (with Krista Thompson; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans 2014-15), which is set for a Caribbean and North American tour (Independent Curators International, 2015-17). Recently, she was a guest curator for the BMW Tate Live Series processional performance Up Hill Down Hall: An Indoor Carnival (Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, London, 2014) and a curator for Are you Alive or Not? Looking at ART Through the Lens of THEATRE, a program of the Rietveld Academy (Rietveld Studium Generale, Amsterdam, 2015.) She is currently the artistic director of the opening ceremony of the Faena District Miami Beach in 2015 (in collaboration with Gia Wolff as architectural director and Arto Lindsay as musical director). Earlier in her career, Tancons organized the first New York solo exhibitions of Robin Rhode (Artists Space, 2004) and Ralph Lemon (with Anthony Allen, The Kitchen, 2007) as well as an exhibition of Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation (Paula Cooper Gallery @ 521 West 21st, 2004). She was also a research assistant and a production assistant to Coco Fusco (Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, International Center of Photography, 2001-02; The Incredible Disappearing Woman and Dolores from 10 to 10, 2001 and 2002 respectively), and a character in a video installation by Lorna Simpson (31, 2002). …1/2… Tancons wrote earlier monographic essays about Robin Rhode, David Hammons and Chris Ofili. Since then, she has written extensively about Carnival, the carnivalesque, public ceremonial culture, performance and protest in NKA, Small Axe and Third Text and, for e-flux Journal, the oft-translated and re-published Occupy Wall Street: Carnival Against Capital: The Carnivalesque as Protest Sensibility (2011). In addition to English, her writings have been published and translated in French, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Swedish. As the 2014 art professional-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts she pursued writing towards two books, currently under way. She speaks frequently about her work at art and academic institutions and has taught the summer intensive graduate curatorial seminar at IUAV University in Venice (2012, 2013) and conducted workshops, seminars and tutorials with University Arts London (2014) and CuratorLab in Stockholm (2015). A graduate in Museum Studies from École du Louvre (1999) and in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2000), and a former Curatorial Fellow of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (2001) and Curatorial Fellow at the Walker Art Center (2003), Tancons is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship (2008), a Prince Claus Fund Artistic Production Grant (2009) and two Curatorial Research Fellowships from the Foundation for Arts Initiative (2007, 2009) among others. In 2012, Tancons received the Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. Born in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, Tancons is based in New Orleans and works in situ. …2/2… .
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