From the original Festival website:

“If the sheet of paper on which this text is printed is the product of an industry, its format is thus the expression of a standard that is defined according to its common use. If the door frame that leads to the exhibition space delimits a width and height in order to pass through it, or alternatively to pass something through it, it thus demonstrates a public (domestic or technical) use of space. Furthermore, if in its measurements the space itself places the visitor’s body in relation to a proportionate or disproportionate scale relative to his or her height and size, this is because architecture is a language that conditions various modes of behaviour.

Certain members of society invest themselves in the service of material and formal order; they define, for example, the format of a standard A4 sheet of paper, the geometry of doors or the architecture of physical spaces. Others such as Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci aim at a revolt of matter and form. The former conform to a regime of visibility that underscores the determined character of things; they contribute to the reign of products that are offered as an irreversible totality without limits. The latter work at the occluded margins of finished products in order to give their depreciated contours a presence. What is rendered visible in Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci’s exhibition is not confined to what is present, as is the case with demonstrators of home or DIY appliances in department stores. The act of infinite repetition as it is applied to an object is not simply undertaken in order to confine it to a single use. Indeed, if Marie Cool’s precise and calculated actions refer as much to the movements of a dancer as they do to that of a worker on an assembly line, they are therefore intended to express the dissonance and familiarity of both. The difference between the physical activity of an artist and that of a worker can be seen in the insubordination of an activity in relation to a determined use. However, it would be too simple to leave it at that; and, in truth, if the work of Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci could be reduced to the distinction between artist and worker, they would henceforth merely have to repeat and continue their past activities. Indeed, what characterises the work of these two artists is their aim of pursuing an alternative strategy of use, which imprints itself on matter and, in turn, leaves an imprint on the body, as is the case, for example, in the series Werksatz (1963-1969) by Franz Erhard Walther.

What is also distinct in their work is the way in which they reinvest, at another level, the repetition, characteristic of such painters as Niele Toroni, which weighs on painting as a practice; or, again, the ways in which they redistribute, to other parts of the body, the elementary physical act of a pedestrian in movement, associated with the work of Stanley Brouwn. However, these references no longer suffice in affirming any solidarity with either a worker on an assembly line in the 1970s or today’s call centre worker. For above all what distinguishes the work of Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci from a previous generation, and thus what links them to their contemporaries, is the way in which they undo the illusion of a delimited and accessible body as a totality: the way in which they underscore a dependency that is both mental and physical and, again, the way in which they reveal the reciprocity between the human body and matter. The sheet of paper, the table, the thread, the doorframe, the borders of a room and, at times, the edges of a window delimit Marie Cool’s body in action. Her body is often divided vertically and symmetrically, although never in a systematic way; it is sometimes horizontally cut in two by the top of a table that delimits the use of her legs. This work of dividing the limbs in action, the reversibility between a hand and a sheet of A4 paper underscores interdependency. The doubt that is brought about by the length of the action and the multiplication of the sequences opens up a reversal of matter. Is it the hand that grasps the sheet of paper in movement or follows the thread of cotton as it is used up? Or is it the other way around? The duration of the exhibition dissolves Marie Cool’s body in a material environment, in that her body can no longer be associated with the role of a fictional character on a stage.

Fabio Balducci’s physical withdrawal reveals the empty presence that haunts and controls the objects and the movements of each of Marie Cool’s gestures. The action is undertaken in the absence of the visitor after he or she has come and gone. It is not the deconstruction of various physical acts in their work that leads to a revolt of matter and an insurrection of forms, but rather their reiteration in absolute apathy. The negation of the spectator, Fabio Balducci’s exposed absence, and Marie Cool’s absorption in each of her activities, recalls the anti-theatrical strategies adopted by French painters in the eighteenth century as they are described in detail by Diderot in his Salon writings: the absorption of the human figure, figures placed with their backs to the spectator, or the de-centering of the depicted scene can be understood as so many anti-theatrical tactics designed to negate the presence of the spectator standing in front of the canvas. Marie Cool’s actions equally evoke the notion of “task based movements” as defined by Anna Halprin, who, at the end of the 1950s, introduced daily physical activities repeated on a dance platform. Or, again, they recall Odile Duboc who in her work Entreacte, from the 1970s, inversely immersed such simple gestures, repeated endlessly by her dancers, within the urban realm. In the case of painting, eighteenth century painters in neglecting the presence of the spectator, wished, according to Diderot, to show at once the subject painted and the subject of painting. In the case of dance, the choreographers of the 1960s and 1970s aimed at both presenting the social body and dance. Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci look to these two traditions in order to reactualise the stakes involved. They just as much present a living form and matter as they do the life of both form and matter. This tradition aims at de-conditioning the gaze of the spectator and turning it around, in the hope that out of this gaze, even its name will disappear in favour of a new name which, as history shows us, remains endlessly deferred.”  (Pierre Bal Blanc, April 2009).

Previous actions by Marie Cool Fabio Balducci include those seen at the NRLA in 2003, 2004 and 2007.