My practice responds to my passion for learning through a process of immersion and response-ability. My artworks – in the form of paintings, films, texts, photography – cultivate “sympoiesis” (making-with): the process that unfurls dynamic symbiotic complexities in our troubled times.
My series, Karstic-Actions (2011- ), explores proprioception (sense of body position) and kinesthesia (sense of body movement), as meeting points between (action) painting, poetry, text, voice, photography, film, health, improvised music, and also, at times, integrating cooking: I have been sharing food with audiences since the 1990s in a search for sustainability of body and mind, keeping health as the central axis, with “health” understood in a wholistic sense.
I consider my work as an eco-feminist art’s healing response-ability practice, that finds its volition in sympoiesis, which can reshape our consciousness sustainably. Human and other-than-human: we are inextricably linked, and my projects are a continuous investigation engaging with and emphasizing these relationships. In the words of one of my greatest inspirations:
Learning remembering as the image opens worlds concrete, sensuous. There is no manipulating. I have been needing to retain, regain a beginning; the unwilled sight sense, palpable being – an emergence of my own world forms free in space of its expressive determination, of its desire to give light. — Carolee Schneemann
“Nicole Peyrafitte is a brilliant and most original performer. Her vocalizations, her songs, her gestures are provocative: both stunningly beautiful and powerfully unnerving at times. She is the chthonic goddess come to tempt you, scare you, transform you. She is in the poetic lineage of Greek tragedy, Café Voltaire antics, of dada and surrealist play but with a post-modern, hip sensibility. I am transfixed when she’s on stage.” — Anne Waldman
“Performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte serves up some very interesting sound-scapes and emotional improvisations on her new CD entitled “La Garbure Transcontinentale / The Bi-Continental Chowder“. Alternating between French and English poetics, Peyrafitte attempts to help the listener make the connection that she has made through her heuristic research in America and in France… The Bi-Continental Chowder is a very tasty and imaginative work. With Peyrafitte’s vocal borrowings from Meredith Monk and Yoko Ono and a band that lends credence to her vocal explorations, this CD is definitely recommended for those listeners in need of an ear stretching.” — Darryl Gregory
Nicole Peyrafitte est une artiste pluridisciplinaire native des Pyrénées. Bien que résidant depuis longtemps à New York, ses travaux — qu’ils soient arts plastiques, écriture, performance, cinéma ou d’ordre culinaire — puisent tous dans l’histoire éclectique de son identité formée entre deux continents et quatre langues.
Ses travaux récents incluent une exposition sur trois niveaux avec live performance Peyrafitte / Joris : Domopoetic Works à la Galerie Simoncini, Luxembourg, avec son collaborateur de longue date, le poète et traducteur Pierre Joris, et Things Fall Where They Lie / Les Choses Tombent Où Elles Reposent (2018) un film dont elle signe la réalisation. En plus de livres (dernières parutions: Carnet 2, RedfoxPress Ireland, 2018 et Landsc0pes, Plaine Page, 2018), fascicules et traductions, elle est l’auteur des CDs Whisk! Don’t Churn! avec Michael Bisio et The Bi-Continental Chowder.
Nicole Peyrafitte a présenté son travail dans les lieux suivants (liste non-exhaustive) : à New York ; le Poetry Project, le Bowery Poetry Club, Bard College, le Borough of Manhattan Community College, The Vision Festival et Poets House. Aux États-Unis, San Francisco State University, University of California San Diego, the Walker Art Institute ainsi que Boise State University et Naropa University où elle était artiste enseignante en résidence. Internationalement, Birbeck College, University of London, University of Edinburgh, Université de Bordeaux, Festival les Voix de La Méditerranée à Sète, Festival de San Luis Potosi et Encuentro Internacional de Escritores à Durango (Mexico) sont quelques-uns des endroits à avoir présenté ses performances. Pour un CV complet, cliquez ici.
“Nicole Peyrafitte est une interprète brillante et extrêmement originale. Ses vocalisations, ses chansons, ses gestes sont provocants: à la fois éblouissants, beau et aussi déconcertants. Elle est la déesse chthonienne qui vient vous tenter, vous effrayer, vous transformer. Elle est dans la lignée poétique de la tragédie grecque, du Café Voltaire, de dada et des jeux surréalistes mais le tout avec une sensibilité post-moderne audacieuse. Quand elle est sur la scène je reste médusée”. – Anne Waldman (Poet / Performer)
Best Performance Art Venue
453 Madison Ave., Albany. 463-9779.
Yes, we know all about delightfully strange art happenings at iEAR at RPI, but Nicole Peyrafitte’s Experimental Cabaret — held at Tess’ Lark Tavern at 7 p.m. on the second Monday of the month — has been a marvelous boon to thinking-outside-the-box artists, and it’s decidedly more democratic. Since the monthly shows began back in November, Peyrafitte has hosted a wide variety of unclassifiable multimedia performance art — improv poetry ‘n’ dance, PowerPoint ‘n’ stand-up comedy, poetry ‘n’ live jazz, video ‘n’ DJ, whatever. You just never know what you’re going to see and hear — and that’s the beauty of it. Ex Cab is on hiatus for the summer, but Peyrafitte promises to rev things up again for a second season beginning in October.
Best Performance Artist
Now that’s performance art.
Interviews
- WOXX (10/2017)
- La Dépêche du Midi (06/2016)
- Ràdio País (Entervista with Domenja Lekuona, 2004)