Jochen Gerz's Performance Art at Centre Pompidou

The Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris presents 'Temps détournés', an exhibition documenting Jochen Gerz's performance art from the 1970s onward, running from February 6 to April 22, 2002. The show includes videos and installations that trace Gerz's evolution from confrontational performances—such as 'Purple Cross for Absent Now' (1979), where the audience tugged a cord around his neck—to later works like 'Welcome Home' (1980) and 'We are coming' (1981), which marked a shift toward collaboration with the public. After 1980, Gerz increasingly ceded agency to participants, as seen in 'Nacher, Nacher' (Berlin, 1982), where students lived with him in darkness for 48 hours and later recounted their experience on camera. The exhibition also features 'Die Kleine Zeit' (2000), a video of German intellectuals responding silently to a question about the Holocaust memorial. Critic Claude Gintz notes that while the audiovisual documentation is valuable, the distinction between original video works and reproductions of performances has become blurred in the age of mechanical reproduction.