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Writing

Mia Habib, ALL – a physical poem of protest

Performance review, Flash Art

27 September 2019

  • Mia Habib, ALL – a physical poem of protest, Time Based Art Festival, Portland, Oregon, 2019

    Mia Habib, ALL – a physical poem of protest, Time Based Art Festival, Portland, Oregon, 2019

A swarm of people gathers in Pioneer Square, the amphitheater-shaped plaza that is Portland, Oregon’s downtown hub. These thirty or forty individuals start walking on the spot, winding in and out of each other, like the warp and weft of a fabric in the making. Surveying this group of varying ages, ethnicities and genders offers no clue as to what is materializing. It might be a flash mob in preparation for a more elaborate dance or a protest in formation, and it is this potent space of human possibility that Oslo-based choreographer Mia Habib’s ALL – a physical poem of protest insists on holding open.

Someone starts to run. One by one, other performers join in, until the running spreads from the outside of the swarm through to its core, imparting a sense of collective urgency. As this speed fades and the swarm’s walking pace returns, a single person remains running solo, as if holding a lighted torch. For the next two and a half hours, individual and collective gestures will repeatedly dissolve into each other, forming an ecosystem of understated and organic motion. It is poignant to witness this unspectacular moving collective, whose vulnerability as a phenomenon in public space is brought home by the presence of a few completely naked performers. The threat of violence that accompanies this gesture is quietly palpable, even in the legitimated context of the annual Time Based Art (TBA) festival, creating the occasion for this performance.1

Two homeless men argue about what they are watching. “It’s a protest,” insists one of them. “For what?”, asks the other. “Can’t you see? It’s for freedom,” the former insists. To prove his point, he joins the moving swam, holding his paper cup as he runs. As the performers stretch out a hand to rest on their peers’ shoulders, the homeless man becomes part of a moving trio. The success of this “epic, durational, community performance” is brought home by the spontaneous participation of several bystanders, including a woman with a dog on a leash that runs as if his life depends on it.2 The scene is not without comedy or tragedy; as rich in human texture as a Shakespearean plot.

The following day Habib’s performance takes place at Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. In this second iteration, the performers file into the warehouse space, all naked; their bodies retracing each other’s movements in almost total silence. Their collective presence is a powerful evocation of “bare life”, haunted by the current slippage of human life into a “zone of indistinction” facilitated by right-leaning thinking.3 At recurring moments, this forty-strong crowd stands as an unmoving human circle. Ten or more minutes pass of this quiet intensity. During almost three hours of observing, one slowly gets to know the bodies of each performer, almost intimately but not voyeuristically. Rather, this process of coming-to-know evokes empathy; for the surgeries that have left their marks, the uneven distribution of body weight, for the fluid spectrum of gender, the endless variations of skin tones, for the personal narratives embedded in tattoos. The performance is ritualistic and collaborative; suspending trust between every performer and each member of the audience. It is entirely un-dogmatic in its approach, acting like a mindfulness exercise that plunges us into the fragile reality of humanity. Almost two hours into the performance, I find myself deeply moved, even welling up with emotion. This depth of impact seems to come from the unspoken feeling of solidarity; the way this collective work pushes back silently against a world which is “ripening for fascism”.4 I am left with a sense of gratitude for having been entrusted with something unnamable and precious.

This review was published in Flash Art, Fall 2019 edition, and in the online edition on 27 September 2019

Notes

1 The 17th edition of Portland’s annual Time Based Art (TBA) festival, curated by Roya Amirsoleymani, Erin Boberg Doughton and Kristan Kennedy, artistic directors of Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, took place from 5–15 September 2019 at venues across the city. Mia Habib’s ALL – a physical poem of protest (06 and 07 September) was facilitated in collaboration with visiting artists Shantelle Courvoisier and Tommy Noonan as well as Physical Education (P.E.) and other Portland-based artistic collectives and organizations.
↩

2 Tali Hatuka, “Choreography of Protest”, cited in TBA catalogue 2019, p. 12.
↩

3 Giorgio Agamben uses these two terms throughout Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
↩

4 Svetlana Alexievich, cited in Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
↩

Writing

Lucy Cotter is a prolific writer; publishing art criticism, cultural criticism, art history, art theory, ficto-theory, poetry, exhibition, performance, cross-disciplinary texts, and catalogue essays. She seeks to create a more generative relationship between art making and writing.

She is the author of Reclaiming Artistic Research (Hatje Cantz, 2019, expanded 2nd ed. 2024), a book foregrounding the singular nature of artistic thinking in dialogue with acclaimed artists worldwide. She is a regular contributor to books on contemporary art by academic presses, and has published in catalogues and monographs on Haegue Yang, Rabih Mroué, Katarina Zdjelar, Brian Maguire, Manuela Infante, and Brian O’ Doherty, among other artists.

She is the editor of several exhibition catalogues, including Cinema Olanda: Wendelien Van Oldenborgh for the 57th Venice Biennale, and has guest-edited a number of art journals, including Third Text. Her work has appeared in Flash Art, Mousse, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Oregon Artswatch, CARA, Field Day, The Brooklyn Rail, Typishly, Cirque, and Frieze, among other journals.

Books

  • Reclaiming Artistic Research: Expanded Second Edition

    Berlin: Hatje Cantz

    Expanding the original book with additional artist dialogues and a new essay, this edition explores the changing stakes of artistic research in a world reckoning with social justice, climate change, and the rise of artificial intelligence through a series of 24 in-depth dialogues with artists worldwide.

    2024

  • Reclaiming Artistic Research

    Berlin: Hatje Cantz

    In twenty conversations with leading artists worldwide, Lucy Cotter maps out an epistemology of artistic creation. She manifests a type of research that is dynamically engaged with other fields, but thinks beyond concepts into bodily and material knowledge that exceeds language, revolutionizing our perception of art from the ground up.

    2019

Books in Progress

Books Chapters & Essays

  • unraveling: practice-led curating

    Companion to Curatorial Futures

    Bridget Crone, Bassam el Baroni, Matthew Poole, eds.

    Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

    forthcoming 2025
    2025

  • Global Engagement and Modalities of Looking in the Work of Brian Maguire, Richard Mosse, and Yuri Pattison

    Routledge Companion to Irish Art

    Fionna Barber and Fintan Cullen, eds.

    London: Routledge

    forthcoming 2025
    2025

  • Haegue Yang: Day and Night

    Haegue Yang: The Great Forgetfulness

    Fergal Gaynor, ed.

    Cork: National Sculpture Factory

    forthcoming 2024
    2024

  • Delegitimizing the Continuum of Violence

    Brian Maguire: The Grand Illusion

    Dublin: The Hugh Lane National Gallery

    2024

  • Fact as Fiction: A Dialogue with Rabih Mroué

    Rabih Mroué: Interviews

    Nadim. Samman, ed.

    Berlin: Hatje Cantz

    2023

  • Theatre as Thinking, Art as Nonknowledge

    Manuela Infante: Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking

    Giovanni Aloi, ed.

    Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

    2023

  • The Warp and Weft of History

    Kristina Benjocki: The Warp and Weft of History

    Amsterdam: Looiersgracht 60

    2023

  • Braiding: Transgenerational Artistic Comradeship

    Katarina Zdjelar (monograph)

    Middlesborough: Institute of Modern Art & Teeside University

    2022

  • (tropisms) away from and towards the thing, it, she

    Natasha Pike (artist's book)

    Dublin: Arts Council

    2022

  • Beyond the Walls of National Identity: The Triangulation of Art Criticism, Curatorial Discourse, and Artistic Practice

    Irish Art 1920–2020: Perspectives on Change

    Yvonne Scott and Christine Kennedy, eds.

    Dublin: Royal Hibernian Academy

    2022

  • After a While, Reflectively: Performing an Ecology of Composition Practice (On Alison Isadora)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts

    Julien Bruneau, Nienke Scholts, Konstantina Georgelou, and Sher Doruff, eds.

    Amsterdam: DAS, University of the Arts

    2021

  • The Body as a Crease of Knowledge (On Mike O' Connor)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts

    Julien Bruneau, Nienke Scholts, Konstantina Georgelou, and Sher Doruff, eds.

    Amsterdam: DAS, University of the Arts

    2021

  • Preparing for Liquefaction (On Siegmar Zacharias)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts, eds. Julian Brumeau, Nienke Scholts et al. Amsterdam: DAS Publishing/Amsterdam University of the Arts

    2021

  • The Accidental Symbol: Performance as a Conduit (On Jennifer Lacey)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts

    Julien Bruneau, Nienke Scholts, Konstantina Georgelou, and Sher Doruff, eds.

    Amsterdam: DAS, University of the Arts

    2021

  • Between and Beyond the Dramaturgical (On Nienke Scholts)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts

    Julien Bruneau, Nienke Scholts, Konstantina Georgelou, and Sher Doruff, eds.

    Amsterdam: DAS, University of the Arts

    2021

  • Walking the Wrinkled Plane (On Gustavo Ciríaco)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts

    Julien Bruneau, Nienke Scholts, Konstantina Georgelou, and Sher Doruff, eds.

    Amsterdam: DAS, University of the Arts

    2021

  • The Space Beyond Boundaries (On Rosie Heinrich)

    Fieldings: Propositions for 3rd Cycle Education in the Performing Arts

    Julien Bruneau, Nienke Scholts, Konstantina Georgelou, and Sher Doruff, eds.

    Amsterdam: DAS, University of the Arts

    2021

  • Art Stars and Plasters on the Wounds: Why Have There Been No Great Irish Artists?

    Sources in Irish Art 2: A Reader

    Fintan Cullen and Róisín Kennedy, eds.

    Cork: Cork University Press

    2021

  • Unknowing Culture

    Persistent Traces of Things to Come

    Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska, eds.

    Amsterdam: Sun and Stars

    2020

  • Mercurial States: A Curatorial Reflection

    Art and Education/Classroom

    2019

  • Towards an autonomy of self, towards a community of self

    Katarina Zdjelar: Vladimir

    Lucerne: Centre of Contemporary Art

    2019

  • Cinema Olanda: Toward a Platform, Realized and Anticipated

    Blessing and Transgressing: A Live Institute

    Defne Ayas, ed.

    London: Cornerhouse

    2018

  • Cinema Olanda: Projecting the Netherlands

    Cinema Olanda: Wendelien van Oldenborgh, ed. Lucy Cotter, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, p. 11–21

    2017

  • Between the White Cube and the White Box: Aspen 5+6

    Brian O Doherty/Patrick Ireland: Word, Image and Institutional Critique, ed. Christa Maria Lerm Hayes. Amsterdam: Valiz

    2017

  • Between the White Cube and the White Box: Brian O’Doherty’s Aspen 5+6, An Early Exposition

    The Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in Academia

    Michael Schwab and Henk Borgdorff, eds.

    Leiden: Leiden University Press.

    2014

  • Close Listening: Katarina Zdjelar’s My lifetime (Malaika)

    Katarina Zdjelar: Of More Than One Voice

    Vitoria-Gasteiz: Artium Basque Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art

    2013

  • 180 Degrees: The University after Artistic Research

    Art Education: A Glossary

    Tom Vandeputte, ed.

    Amsterdam: Sandberg Institute

    2013

  • Libia Olafur: The Future of Hospitality

    Under Deconstruction: Icelandic Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale

    Ellen Blumenstein, ed.

    Berlin: Sternberg Press

    2011

The above contributions are selected from 2011–2024. A complete list from 2005–2024 is available on request.

Art Journals

  • TBA Review: FORCE! an opera in three acts

    Performance review, Oregon Arts Watch

    11 September 2024
    2024

  • Empathy and Eros: Ralph Pugay’s The Longest Journey

    Exhibition review, Oregon Arts Watch.

    11 December 2023
    2023

  • Brian O’ Doherty and his Many Selves

    Tribute article, Brian O’ Doherty memorial publication,

    Brenda Moore-McCann, ed. The Brooklyn Rail.

    May 2023
    2023

  • Brian O’ Doherty, Paradigm-Shifting Artist Dies at 94

    Tribute article, Hyperallergic.

    9 November 2022
    2022

  • The Weft of History: Kristina Benjocki at IKOB, Eupen

    Exhibition review, Metropolis M

    1 June 2022
    2022

  • The Promise of “Opacity”: Takahiro Yamamoto’s Opacity of Performance at Portland Art Museum

    Performance review, Oregon Arts Watch

    24 June 2022
    2022

  • Disintegrating Language: Will Rawls’s “Amphigory”

    Exhibition Review, Oregon Arts Watch.

    23 November 2022
    2022

  • The Art of Zoom

    Essay: “The Art of Zoom”, republished, In the Pause of an Echo, There May Be A Shadow, online symposium publication.

    2020

  • The Art of Zoom

    Essay, RUUKU Journal for Artistic Research, Vol. 14

    6 August 2020
    2020

  • Design as Relationality, Aesthetics as Agency (On dach&zephir)

    Essay, Sophie Krier, ed. Issue 4, Field Essays.

    2019

  • Plants as Other: Manuela Infante’s Estado Vegetal at Portland Institute of Contemporary Art

    Performance Review, Mousse Magazine

    17 May 2019
    2019

  • Wendelien van Oldenborgh at CA2M, Madrid

    Exhibition Preview, Artforum, Summer edition (print and digital).

    2019

  • The Exhibition after Time and Space: On Mario Garcia Torres’s Survey ‘Illusion brought Me Here’

    Essay, Mousse Magazine

    Spring 2019
    2019

  • Beyond the White Cube: Sixty Years of Brian O’ Doherty’s Letters

    Book review, Frieze.

    25 February 2019
    2019

  • Rob Halverson, Enthusiastic-Remotest-Tree

    Exhibition review, Flash Art

    5 June 2019
    2019

  • An Intimate Dance of Objects: Gordon Hall

    Exhibition review, Mousse Magazine

    11 June 2019
    2019

  • Mia Habib, ALL – a physical poem of protest

    Performance review, Flash Art

    27 September 2019
    2019

  • Writing as Experiment: A Dialogue with Sher Doruff

    MaHKUscript Journal for Fine Art Research, Vol (3), Issue 1, 2018

    2018

  • Reclaiming Artistic Research… First Thoughts

    Introductory essay

    2018

  • Sound as Knowledge: A Dialogue with Samson Young

    MaHKUscript Journal for Fine Art Research, Vol (3), Issue 1

    2018

  • Knowledge as Production: A Dialogue with Liam Gillick

    MaHKUscript Journal for Fine Art Research, Vol (3), Issue 1

    2018

  • Black Urban Choreography: NIC Kay’s Pushit!

    Performance Review, Mousse Magazine.

    26 October 2018
    2018

  • Becoming the Archive: A Dialogue with Euridice Kala

    MaHKUscript Journal for Fine Art Research, Vol (3), Issue 1.

    2018

  • Beyond Language: A Dialogue with Falke Pisano

    MaHKUscript Journal for Fine Art Research, Vol (3), Issue 1.

    2018

  • Research as Play: A Dialogue with Ryan Gander

    MaHKUscript Journal for Fine Art Research, Vol (3), Issue 1

    2018

The above contributions are selected from 2017–2024 only. A list of earlier journal publications from 2003–2018 is available on request.

The keys of a computer are not entirely different than those of a piano. Fingers moving across a plane, producing sounds that are spoken or read. Tracing how material and embodied sensibilities can undermine the imposition of language; how words can act as placeholders for emerging subject positions and worldmaking. Embraced as a medium, writing aligns itself with the internal logic of art making.