On 27 May 2011, If I Can’t Dance presents two lectures at the conference of Performance Studies international, the largest international organisation in the field of Performance Studies. If I Can’t Dance has invited Vanessa Desclaux to speak about the work of Matt Mullican, and Inti Guerrero to speak about Flávio de Carvalho. Both speakers are conducting a case study research as part of our programme in Performance in Residence.

Performance in Residence ‘hosts’ a performance-related (body of) work for a substantial period of time, allowing the researcher to engage in an in-depth inquiry. The aim of the project is to connect archival research to practice.

Vanessa Desclaux is a curator based in Paris. She currently holds a research position at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and at Goldsmiths College in London on the MPhil/PhD programme in Art. Taking into account Mullican’s continuous interest in performance, Desclaux will look at Mullican’s ongoing appropriation of his own work, retroactively exploring previous bodies of work as objects of research, which he considers as the essential ground for the making of new work and the invention of new languages within his overarching artistic project.

Inti Guerrero is a curator currently based in Amsterdam. In 2010 Guerrero curated the exhibition The City of the Naked Man at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, introducing de Carvalho’s master plan for a new city in the tropics alongside work by contemporary artists. In his research in Performance in Residence, Inti Guerrero specifically focuses on the relations between the body, the psyche and architectural space in Flávio de Carvalho’s projects.