stvn girard: Swallow the sun
PLACE: Vanha viinatehdas (The Old Liquor Factory), Manilla Culture Factory, Itäinen Rantakatu 64 B
DATE & TIME: Sat 6.9. at 20:30–21
DURATION: 30 min. No pre-registration needes.
LANGUAGE: None
Information about accecibility here
Swallow the Sun is a performance that explores the relationship between the body, light, and erasure. Through a physical ritual of absorption and disappearance, the artist plays with the tension between presence and absence, pushing the limits of perception and bodily resistance. As part of this process, the performance pays tribute to past performance artists whose work lingers like echoes, shaping the present through their spectral presence. Presented in Turku, Swallow the Sun is a meditation on the persistence of memory and the dissolution of the visible.
stvn girard (he/him) is an artist-researcher, artistic director (Le Lieu, centre en art actuel and RiAP, Quebec, CA), and an intradisciplinary theorist in performance art. His performances explore the necessity of humbly bringing past practices into the present through enacted translations—an embodied oral dictionary inscribed in flesh. His practice is rooted in long speculative processes of necromancy-haunting-possession, fueled by archival and field research, where he celebrates the forms, gestures, and artists that have shaken him and shaped the discipline.
He has presented his performances in over a dozen countries, participating in biennials and international events. As a theorist, he has published essays in Inter, Vie des Arts, and other cultural periodicals. A PhD candidate at Université Laval in visual arts, law, and social sciences, his research focuses on the historicization of performance art, archive fever, the anarchive, offensive opacity, provocative generosity, and the notions of homage and haunting.