Slammm, Ramble, Perform is the first monograph devoted to Antwerp-based performance and visual artist Ria Pacquée. Since the 1970s, Pacquée has been at the forefront of a burgeoning performance scene in Belgium, pioneering interventions in which her body plays the central role. Yet unlike many of her peers, Pacquée’s performances avoid the pitfalls of the subjective or the corporeal: her characters, such as Madame or the elusive It figure, are conceptual stand-ins, evolving characters in the larger drama of her oeuvre.

Covering her entire career to date, Slammm, Ramble, Perform features numerous never-seen-before photographs and documents from the artist’s personal archive, alongside Pacquée’s own incisive, poetic statements. The book also includes key texts by Jean Fisher and Michael Taussig, as well as a new essay by Antony Hudek and a candid conversation between the artist and Michael Curran about her videos.

Slammm, Ramble, Perform not only sheds light on Pacquée’s exceptional body of work, but contributes to the wider debates about the place of such radical performative practices in late 20th- and early 21st-century art histories.

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