Vista Warehouse B
3510 Chatham Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44113
Visit the installation during these select dates:
Saturday, September 1, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Saturday, September 15, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday, September 16, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Saturday, September 22, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday, September 23, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
BUSY TIME
A theater play written by Thomas Boutoux and Guillaume Leblon. Performed only July 14 – July 15, 2018.
Busy Time follows our first collaborative project The Interview, originally created in 2007. A play designed for two actors, The Interview presents a conversation between an artist and an art critic going awry. Inspired by the types of exchanges that occur during studio visits, The Interview highlights the many misunderstandings, mutual embarrassments, passionate arguments, and declarative statements that these interactions often produce.
Written and conceived almost ten years after The Interview, Busy Time focuses on our current artistic preoccupations and reflects on how the world in which we work and live has changed during the last decade. We continue to use collaborative playwriting and theatrical dialogue as instruments to discover one’s own identity and meaning in the world through making observations and asking questions. Busy Time addresses a variety of themes including happiness, dignity, aging, solidarity, communication, and observation. If the plot of The Interview can be characterized by internal struggles and the search for clarity, Busy Time embraces the external, seeking to blur the boundaries of the play and outside world.
Busy Time is staged in a selected vacant house in Cleveland where visitors can also access different representations of the play. The house contains new sculptures by Leblon which also comprise the seating for Busy Time. The house’s lifecycle during the three months of FRONT is a key element, making it not merely a backdrop but a fifth actor in the story. Mail will be regularly delivered, necessary maintenance will be performed, and improvements will be made during its run.
Ultimately, the text of the play, movement of the four actors, and community in the house stem from an untraditional theoretical practice that aims to address the realities of what it means to live today.
-Thomas Boutoux and Guillaume Leblon
Artist Biography
Thomas Boutoux is a Paris-based writer, curator, and publisher. He teaches social and contemporary art theory in the MA program of the School of Fine Arts, Bordeaux. He was a founding member of several collective-run small-scale organizations in Paris, art spaces and imprints: Metronome Press, castillo/corrales, Section 7 Books, and the most recent one Paraguay, an organization devoted to developing a new vocabulary of words and actions through a program of publications, talks, exhibitions and workshops. He recently curated the exhibition « Time Will Tell » at El Eco Experimental Museo Mexico and co-organized the long-term project « All : Collected Voices » at Radio Athènes, Athens.
