The exhibition “The Cynics Republic” offers a counter-narrative of the history of performance art.

 

It backdates the emergence of “performative practices” to Antiquity, and traces them in particular back to the moment at which the philosophical school of ancient cynicism first appeared. Imagined by its proponents as an heir to the teaching of Socrates, cynicism also positioned itself in opposition to the contemporary school of Plato. Imagined as a score, “The Cynics Republic” is renewed every day and every week, and draws on a host of dematerialized resources (protocols, scores, films and sound works) from the national collections of The Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) and from the Kontakt Collection in Vienna.