British artist Anthea Hamilton, known for her installations, sculptures, and performances, is premiering Decade of Emotion in the Auditorium at the Bourse de Commerce, the story of a fictional rock group modelled on the progressive rock movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Inspired by a musical genre that is both old-fashioned and modern, these whimsical yet assertive musicians waver between formalism and eclecticism, poetry and technicality. The music, stage design, and costumes of Decade of Emotion, with their multiple influences, emulate the aesthetics of progressive rock to create a narrative territory of personal histories, ghosts, and confessions. At each moment, the work explores the boundaries between inter-generational reality and the formation of musical taste.

Decade of Emotion came to Anthea Hamilton in a vision of the open-air inner courtyard at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007), in which reproductions of works of past civilizations are exhibited on a large plinth of ink-coloured stone. In this space, the heaviness of the stone figures evokes minimalist art and ambiguity, gravity and ornamentation, and a constant dialogue of materials and forms. Anthea Hamilton explains: “I wanted to use this image as a model for a progressive rock group, as a sonic and visual exploration, and above all, it allowed me to work for the first time with sound at a large scale.”

Decade of Emotion resembles the formation of an ephemeral music group, a trajectory of celestial bodies confined to one day, one concert, one album, and just one song.  Together, the band members develop a range of their own gestures, actions, and styles, thereby becoming one with the Auditorium at the Bourse de Commerce. Lying between reality and fiction, Decade of Emotion shows us Anthea Hamilton as she sings, but without hearing her, as well as performers who play, but without understanding them. A decade may suffice to absorb all the emotions they have traversed.

This performance forms part of the curatorial project Pourquoi Paris? initiated by exhibition curator Julie Boukobza, which will also take place at the Centre Pompidou and the Paris club Tango on this same day.

Artist: Anthea Hamilton

Curated by: Julie Boukobza

Movement director: Delphine Gaborit

Performers: Naim Belhaloumi and Alphonse Eklou

Drums: Valentina Magaletti

Musical supervisor: Andrew McDonnell