Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz (born 1972 in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

and 1963 in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

) are a Berlin-based artist duo who have worked together since 2006. They produce film installations that revisit recent and past material (a score, a piece of music, a film, a photograph or a performance), with a particular focus on a critical history of the photographic and moving image itself. The duo works with performance to create embodiments which are able to conflate different times and they often create illegitimate collaborations – partly fictitious, partly cross-temporal. Their work ''To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe, In Recognition of their Desperation'' (2013) is based on the eponymous 1970 score by avant-garde feminist composer

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

, filmed in Funkhaus Nalepastraße, the former GDR Radio studios in Berlin, and featuring performances from the musicians Ray Aggs,

Peaches The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and the glossy-skinned, non-fuzzy varieties called nectarines. Peac ...

, Catriona Shaw,

Verity Susman Verity Susman is an English songwriter, composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist. She is best known as a founding member and the frontwoman of the English indie rock band Electrelane. Music career Following classical piano, clarinet and sax ...

, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and William Wheeler. The work had its premiere exhibition as part of their solo show ''Patriarchal Poetry'' at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, in Autumn 2013 and was shown at

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, in a special event with the artists, Oliveros and

Gregg Bordowitz Gregg Bordowitz (born August 14, 1964) is a writer, artist, and activist who worked as a professor in the Video, New Media, and Animation department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. H ...

in May 2014. In ''I Want'' they stage a meeting between punk poet

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, critic, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that deal ...

, artist Sharon Hayes, and transgender- and prison-abolitionist activist

Chelsea Manning Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage ...

, who, in 2010, channeled classified information about the war in

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

. The performers in their films are choreographers, dancers, artists and musicians, with whom they are having a long-term conversation about performance, the meaning of visibility since early modernity, the pathologization of bodies, but also about companionship, glamour and resistance. Recent retrospectives and solo exhibitions have included ''Improvisation télépathique'', at Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, 2018; ''Everybody talks about the weather... we don't'' at Participant Inc., New York, 2017; ''Loving, Repeating'',

Kunsthalle Wien Kunsthalle Wien is the city of Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city ...

, Vienna, 2015; ''Portrait of an Eye'', Kunstalle Zürich, Zürich, 2015; ''Aftershow'', CAPC, Bordeaux, 2013; ''Toxic Play in Two Acts'',

South London Gallery The South London Gallery, founded 1891, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London. Until 1992, it was known as the South London Art Gallery, and nowadays the acronym SLG is often used. Margot Heller became its direct ...

, 2012; ''Contagieux! Rapports contre la normalité'',

Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève The Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (Centre) is a contemporary art exhibition centre (a ''Kunsthalle'') in Geneva, Switzerland, founded by Adelina von Fürstenberg in 1974.

, 2011. In 2019 Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz were invited to represent Switzerland at the

58th Venice Biennale The 58th Venice Biennale was an international contemporary art exhibition held between May and November 2019. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Ralph Rugoff curated its central exhibition, ''May You ...

. In 2022 and 2023, the duo's installation "El cristal es mi piel" was featured in Madrid's Palacio de Cristal. Their work has been written about by writers and critics including

André Lepecki André Lepecki (born July 15, 1965) is a writer and curator working mainly on performance studies, choreography and dramaturgy. He is a Professor and the chair of the Department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts at New York Uni ...

, Antke Engel and Mathias Danbolt. Their catalogues include ''Telepathic Improvisation'', published by

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948, dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visua ...

, 2018, ''I Want'', published by Sternberg Press, 2015; ''Aftershow'', published by Sternberg Press, 2014, and ''Temporal Drag'', published by Hatje Cantz in 2011. Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz are represented by Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, and Marcelle Alix, Paris.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boudry, Pauline and Lorenz, Renate Living people Art duos German contemporary artists Swiss contemporary artists Queer artists 1972 births Swiss expatriates in Germany German expatriates in Switzerland 21st-century German artists 21st-century Swiss artists