At the Stedelijk Museum, Marie de Brugerolle will give an introduction to the work of Guy de Cointet (1934 – 1983) and screen a short version of her documentary film Who’s that Guy?… tell me more about Guy de Cointet [2010; 50 min; English]. In this film, de Cointet’s friends and colleagues such as Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Robert Wilhite, Richard Jackson, John Baldessari, Larry Bell, and Barbara Smith, remember the artist.

Guy de Cointet was a French-born artist based in California, who created encrypted works on paper and sculptural works – often combining them as props and stage sets in theatrical productions. His practice could be described as ‘theatre in an enlarged field’. His performance pieces combined literary puzzles inspired by the works of Raymond Roussel and the tropes of TV soap opera, and were performed by actors such as Factory ‘superstar’ Viva and diminutive comedian Billy Barty.

Performance in Residence
If I Can’t Dance has invited Marie de Brugerolle to be the first cultural practitioner to research a case study in the new programme titled: Performance in Residence. Performance in Residence ‘hosts’ a performance for a substantial period of time, allowing the researcher to engage in an in-depth inquiry, connecting archival research to practice. During a period of six months, Marie de Brugerolle will examine Guy de Cointet’s play Five Sisters (1983) – the last performance to be staged during his lifetime. The restaging of Iglu – that will take place on 9 November 2010 at Frascati WG – and the lecture at the Stedelijk Museum mark the start of this research period.

Five Sisters
Marie de Brugerolle, in her role of dramaturge, brings her expertise of the work of de Cointet, and her experience in the remaking of several of his plays over the past years. Five Sisters takes a special place in de Cointet’s oeuvre because of the absence of props and a total concentration on light and sound, result of de Cointet’s interest in phenomenology and affect. Marie de Brugerolle typified Five Sisters as «a mix of The three Sisters by Tsjechov and Charlie’s Angels coming back from a psy show!» The restaging of Five Sisters is expected in June 2011.