continuous moment: le désir...
It is a frequently cited fact that the best way to articulate a sentiment about the present is to borrow from the vocabulary of the past. We constantly see this happen in the media, in politics and, not least, in art where, since at least the early-1990s, the trope of the remake or the re-enactment has been employed as a critical means for comparing historical moments, political regimes or more abstracted, intra-artistic concerns. One important aspect of Damiano Bertoli’s practice is the gesture of forming a dialogue with art history: in ‘revisiting historical works and extending them’ into the present day.1 Typically when such trans-temporal comparisons are levelled, the former image or concept is used to historically frame the latter, with the slippages that occur between the two consequently being brought into focus. But what if, in the act of staging this type of remake, Bertoli was not so interested in the slippages but in honing the sense of continuity instead? Drawing an imaginary web, for instance, between the 1980s American TV show Miami Vice and its 2006 film remake (both written, directed and produced by Michael Mann) creates what the artist refers to as a ‘continuous moment’, where the time that has elapsed between the two temporal points is not counterposed but suspended.
Bertoli’s exhibition, ‘Continuous Moment: Le Désir…’, plots the trajectory of Pablo Picasso’s play ‘Le Désir Attrapé Par La Queue’ (written 1941). It was performed once as a reading in 1944 in a Paris atelier, and for a second time in 1967 as a production organised by the French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel and musically accompanied by Soft Machine near St Tropez as part of the 4th