This Situation is probably Tino Sehgal's most elaborate work, the one in which his ingenuity is expressed to the highest degree. It is a form of acidic mischievousness that corrodes the conventions of the history of art and thinking, the museum and the stage. With This Situation, the artist opens a chapter of a "theatre of ideas" that would take the theatre dimension of the title into account. Each "situation" is unique, as is each moment of each "situation". The components can be identified, their combination nonetheless produces different effects each time. In This Situation, the visitor is asked to freely attend a "built situation" that develops into a fascinating art of conversation, led by those whom Tino Sehgal calls "players". An exchange enriched by the best intellectual sources (Montaigne, Nietzsche, the situationalists) in which philosophy vies with morality, economics with political science, the poem with the essay. What emerges is an intelligent questioning of a society that believes it debates everything and often does nothing but string together meaningless phrases. The visitor is a trigger, a witness, and sometimes a more or less voluntary co-author of This Situation insofar as he remains ignorant of the exact place he occupies. Never short of ideas, the "players" form a circle that continuously reactivates a circular mechanism, grinding the good grain of ideas to the benefit of what the 18th century called the spirit. JLP
Production
remerciements à la Maison des métallos - Paris
