From Antwerp to Liège: Revisiting the MesuRAGEs

ORLAN first performed a MesuRAGE at the International Cultural Centre in Antwerp in 1980 and returned to Antwerp in 2012 for another performance at M HKA. Since initiating the MesuRAGE series in 1968, she has used her own body as both artistic material and a measuring instrument to determine the dimensions of a site in body-lengths. The ICC counted 41 ORLAN bodies, while M HKA counted 74 times. Researcher Annosh Urbanke spoke with ORLAN in Paris about the context of her performances in Antwerp and Liège, the role of the audience, and the presence of the body and labour in her work.

Interview with ORLAN by Annosh Urbanke, December 4, 2025

Annosh Urbanke: The performance at M HKA was one of your last MesuRAGEs. It took place 32 years after your first MesuRAGE in Antwerp, which you performed during your solo exhibition at the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC). What conclusions do you draw from this series of performances over the years?

ORLAN: For artists, measuring oneself against the institution that brings them notoriety — or that crushes them by leaving them in the shadows — is always relevant, particularly for women.

A: How do you consider the role of the audience in the MesuRAGEs?

O: I am always very attentive to the audience, and there is always a possibility of interaction in my performances. The relationship with the audience in the MesuRAGEs evolved greatly over the years. The rewards were not the same in the street measurements as in those carried out in institutions.

I began performing in the street, reading my “prosésies” and my “peauaimes”, but also from 1964 onwards with a performance entitled Action OR-Lent: Slow Walks. I carried out these walks in the streets of Saint-Étienne, Toulon, Marseille, Nice, Avignon, Firminy…These early performances mark the beginning of my use of my body in public space as an artistic and non-violent disruptive gesture — as action, even activism. The street became a space of expression and creation.

I found myself facing passers-by who became an unsuspecting audience. Reactions could be very diverse: surprise, curiosity, amusement, sometimes incomprehension or even rejection. This dimension of unpredictability was an integral part of the performance. The public was not only a spectator; it often became an actor despite itself, because its presence, its gazes, its comments or its movements modified the situation. In the street, the performance was constructed through direct and immediate encounters with the people present.

A: Was it different from an institutional context?

O: Institutional performances, were commissioned and programmed, and took place in front of an informed audience — people sensitive to art who more or less knew what they were going to see. The relationship with the audience is different there: attention is more concentrated, the gaze more prepared, but sometimes also more distant.

In these institutional contexts I tried to maintain the possibility of exchange and participation that existed naturally in the street. The MesuRAGEs often invite the audience to become involved: through the proximity of bodies, through movement in space, through awareness of the act of measuring. The audience then becomes both witness and partner in the process.

A: In 2012 you carried out a MesuRAGE during your exhibition at M HKA in Antwerp. Apart from Bart De Baere and Flor Bex, who invited you, you also invited Marina Abramović, Barbara Koenig, Guillaume Bijl and Jan Fabre to witness the counting. Why did you choose these particular people, and did they have specific roles in that context?

O: I felt it was important to have two artists as witnesses, so I chose Guillaume Bijl and Jan Fabre, with whom I had often worked. My good friend Barbara Koenig, an architect in Antwerp, was also present, as was Marina Abramović, who was in the city for a performance.

A: The MesuRAGEs you did in Liège in 1980 seemed more explicitly activist than your earlier MesuRAGEs carried out in museums. Was this a deliberate change because of the situation?

O: I carried out the measurement of Place Saint-Lambert in Liège. At that time the square had been completely demolished and was nothing more than a huge gaping hole in the middle of the city without a reconstruction project. An association campaigning for its reconstruction invited me to come, through the intermediary of Cirque Divers, an art centre directed by Michel Antaki.

This time I measured the square in a completely different way. I used the excavators that had destroyed it and worked with the workers on the construction site. I did not want to roll around in the mud and dirt of the site, as the reading of the work would have been different. Each day an excavator took me to the day’s stage, producing a striking image of me being transported in its “metal jaw”. Once I arrived at the designated spot, I began the measurement. The workers placed wooden planks in front of me so that I could move forward and measure without getting dirty. The number of ORLAN-bodies contained in the square and its construction site was then counted with witnesses.

On the third day I was stopped by the mayor: I was not allowed to continue the performance. In the end this was great because this brought it to the newspaper headlines, bringing the campaigning organisation into the spotlight.

A: Your work also demonstrates the often invisible labour behind the artwork — from washing the apron after a MesuRAGE to the teams involved in the surgical performances. What made you want to share this?

O: Yes. I show that the work is not only a result but a process of elaboration. Showing the labour and the process was fully part of the performance. It was about constructing “traces” of the performance — photographs, videos, artworks and material objects — intended to be shown later. Revealing the backstage elements (such as the surgical team or the washing of a dress), which art often hides, was a deliberate and central choice in the meaning of the work.

When one makes a performance one actually makes two works: the performance itself and the testimonies that result from it and become works in their own right, often photographs and videos. Performances move towards disappearance and oblivion if this work is not done.

For the MesuRAGEs I exhibited the samples, the reports, photographs and videos, as well as commemorative plaques, works in the form of editions. For the surgical-operation performances I produced videos, photographs, drawings made with my blood and fingers, reliquaries containing my fat and flesh, kinds of “holy shrouds” made with my dried blood and medical gauze from the operation, onto which I transferred photographic images of my face, and objects later exhibited in museums and galleries.

A: More generally, how did you experience the artistic climate in Belgium in 1980?

O: It was very active and very supportive. The human environment was very open and very friendly, and there were excellent artists: Guillaume Bijl, Jan Fabre, Eric Duyckaerts, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Panamarenko, Lili Dujourie, Jacques Charlier.