JULIAN ROSEFELDT | MANIFESTO

German artist Julian Rosefeldt produced Manifesto in 2015. This immersive video installation consisting of thirteen large-screen projections stands as a tribute to the literary power of artistic manifestos. This artwork/event, which lies at the crossroads between film, performance and installation, gives the MAC’s audiences an opportunity to personally experience an important piece by a major artist whose work remains relatively little known.

Manifesto allows audiences to experience a series of scenes screened simultaneously showing us the same actor (Cate Blanchett) taking on various roles. All of the monologues spoken—actually, the only words spoken in the piece—are formed out of various artistic manifestos published over the last 150 years or so. From schoolteacher to homeless man, the thirteen characters embodied by Blanchett pronounce the manifestos of Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Elaine Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt and Jim Jarmusch, among others.

Manifesto has been mounted in more than a dozen cities around the world; its Montréal presentation will be only its second in North America, after the Park Avenue Armory in New York.