Introduction

For his participation at Art Basel Parcours 2018, Jean-Pascal Flavien will present vacation house—a musical presentation. Taking place at the offices of a real estate agency, emptied of other staff and filled with designer furniture, the performance will include an opera singer introducing Flavien’s new project to the audience. The performance takes the form of a sales pitch: the libretto written by the artist pairs the standard language of a business proposal with a description of the house—its specific location, properties and amenities, similar to the protocol the artist produces for all his houses. The song consists of individual short sections, always beginning with the direct contact with a potential customer. The musical score was written by the French musician and composer Augustin Maurs, with whom the artist previously collaborated on the record statement house.

Jean-Pascal Flavien’s musical performance extends his project of combining elements from architecture, sculpture, and the performative, transforming the inhabitants from earlier projects into an active presenter-doubling perhaps as interpreter, author figure, and spokesperson for the house. Flavien draws on the narrative tradition of the French musical, exemplified by the 1964 classic “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”. Unlike the anglophone tradition of mixing spoken word and song, all dialogue in Jacques Demy’s musical film was sung.

The house presented in the course of the musical performance is entitled vacation house—described as a distant place, the house is said to both be a site of vacation as well as a site on vacation from us. Flavien’s houses are always generated from settings imposed by the artist and/or requirements determined by function and imagined site, creating a vivid impression that is precise and concrete but also poetic and evocative.