Pierre Bal-Blanc was born in 1965 in Ugine in the Savoy region of France. He lives and works between Paris and Athens.
In his practice as a freelance curator and essayist, Pierre Bal-Blanc reflects upon institutional frameworks and broad histories of performance art. Between 2003 and 2014, Pierre Bal-Blanc was the director of the CAC Brétigny art centre, where he created his first scores for performance exhibitions, including “La Monnaie vivante/Living Currency” (CAC Brétigny/Micadanses, 2005-06; Stuk Leuven, 2007; Tate Modern London, 2008; MoMA Warsaw, 6th Berlin Biennale, 2010). In 2017, Sternberg Press published Project Phalanstère, a book which looks back on the experiments he carried out together with his team during his tenure at CAC Brétigny. He has also published The Death of the Audience (Secession, Vienna, 2010) and Soleil Politique (exhibition catalogue, Museion Bolzano 2015).

He was also a co-curator of documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, under the artistic direction of Adam Szymczyk, and a guest curator of the 7th Lyon Biennial, under the direction of Hans Ulrich Obrist and Stéphanie Moisdon. In 2017, in collaboration with guest artists, he produced the exhibition “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body” at documenta 14, before creating a new version of this project in 2019, “The Private Score”, based on pieces from the Kontakt Collection. Focusing on artists from central and southeast Europe, this project was first shown in Vienna and at the M Museum in Leuven, before travelling to the Galerias Municipais in Lisbon in 2021, as well as to the National Art Museum of Romania in 2023. The score was published by Paraguay Press in 2019.

In 2022, he published Notes sur la documenta 14 (The Continuum Was Performed in the Following Manner) (NERO-CAC Geneve). He has recently opened a solo exhibition of work by Tomislav Gotovac at the MSU Zagreb for the start of 2024. He is currently preparing a solo exhibition by Cezary Bodzianowski (1968, Poland) for the Maura Greco Foundation in Naples that will open in May, as well as a solo exhibition by Adrian Paci (1969, Albania) for the Cukrarna Gallery in Ljubljana, that will open in June.