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Item: Porta Filliou

1977-1997

Video, 00:47:00.
Materials: laserdisc

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Collection Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK7511_M352_1).

Robert Filliou developed the idea for his series of didactic video works during his time in Canada in the late 1970s. He used the medium of film to record these performances, and to circulate them, so they might be seen by a wider – not just art-going public. In these videos, Filliou interacts directly with the viewer, offering half-serious/half-ironical explanations about his works, his activities and his general approach to art. Porta Filliou contains talks and performances that summarize a number of Filliou’s works and puts them into context. In And So On, End So Soon. Done 3 Times, Filliou discusses the application in film of his Principle of Equivalence (in life as in art, ‘well made’, ‘poorly made’ and ‘unmade’, are three equivalent propositions), after which he demonstrates this principle in Telepathic Music No 7 with a performance example. The two videos from the series Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts Part II are a continuation of the artistic presentations that appeared in the 1970 publication Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts. In this book, artists like Joseph Beuys and John Cage present how to apply techniques drawn from performance art to education. In these videos, where topics are organized into chapters, the Robert Filliou on the screen gives orders to the Robert Filliou standing next to the monitor, like master and pupil (or master and slave!).