Marina Abramovic
Graciela Carnevale
Simone Forti
Anna Halprin
Reinhild Hoffmann
Channa Horwitz
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Sanja Ivekovic
Adrian Piper
Yvonne Rainer
Boris Charmatz
Sigrid Gareis
Georg Schollhammer
"A History of Performance in 10 Acts" is an international live exhibition on the history of art performance in dance and fine art. As an exhibition 'in progress', the project shows and develops new formats of museal presentation of live acts. The starting point is the interest in the processes of coming to terms with history in so-called re-enactments of historic performances.
Curated by: Boris Charmatz, Sigrid Gareis, Georg Schöllhammer
Display Concept: Johannes Porsch
Performance as part of the performing and fine arts has many faces. Location
Until now the connecting element conceived of performance as ZKM | Museum of
direct, situational, place-bound and transient. New questions Contemporary Art
emerge in connection with the present interest in re-enactment: how
is the performative to be presented in the museal context? In what
way is this art form to be documented? This is the challenge taken
up by the exhibition project.
“Moments. A History of Performance in 10 Acts” is an international live
exhibition on the history of art performance in dance and fine art. As an
exhibition ‘in progress’, the project shows and develops new formats of
museal presentation of live acts. The starting point is the interest in the
processes of coming to terms with history in so-called re-enactments of
historic performances, but which also comes to expression in the recently
erupted controversy surrounding the museal presentability of
performances by Joseph Beuys in photographic documentation.
This is
also reflected in the practice of a younger generation of performers and
choreographs, such as in numerous historical appropriations and re-
enactments. At the center of this is the “heroic” period of the 1960s to the
1980s in which a radical (new) definition of the genre took place in the
more intimate dialog between performance movements of fine art and
dance.
“Moments” develops new methodological and interdisciplinary formats of
an active and not only museal representation of performance history.
During the eight week duration of the exhibition project a scenic act
around ten central stages of dance and performance history unfolds – as
witnessed by a group of experts invited to accompany and observe for
the entire period – before the audience. Some of the key focal points are
the performances and works by women who have consciously been
thematizing, transgressing and critiquing the genre boundaries between
dance, performance and visual media since the 1960s. Here, they
likewise reflect on the implicit male constructions of the gaze and the
gestural logic of their colleagues.
“Over a period of eight weeks a permanent live dialog emerges between
performers, theorists, viewers and the public. The traces of the
approximation to historical performances activated in the exhibition’s real
time are the actual actors of this project: the moments.” (Boris Charmatz,
Sigrid Gareis, Georg Schöllhammer – curators)
The exhibition begins and ends in an empty space in which a lively
exhibition display is built up in a permanent reciprocal movement
between historical presence and medial documentation, museal re-
presentation and scenic re-appropriation as well as new interpretation. A
multiplicity of dialogically spirited situations emerge between performers,
witnesses and public. Here, unlike more popular reenactments, recourse
to history serves as a face à l’histoire, an active contrast of the historical
and the present.
Among others, the artists represented in the exhibition will be Marina
Abramović, Graciela Carnevale, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Reinhild
Hoffmann, Channa Horwitz, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sanja Iveković,
Adrian Piper and Yvonne Rainer. The artists themselves document their
historical performances in exhibition spaces. In collaboration with
colleagues from art and theory (Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Nikolaus Hirsch,
Lenio Kaklea, Jan Ritsema, Christine De Smedt, Gerald Siegmund,
Burkhard Stangl, Meg Stuart) Boris Charmatz approaches the
documented works scenically and develops on-site a live act in a
laboratory situation around this central moment of performance history.
The artist Ruti Sela will be documenting this artistic approach to the work
of their predecessors by way of film documentaries and will produce a
film in the actual exhibition context itself. A group of students at
renowned European universities will be accompanying the entire
process. Directed by the group Charmatz, and in collaboration with the
ZKM | Museum Communication, new performative methods and actions
of the mediation of historical performance will be presented to visitors.
A publication will be released at the end of the exhibition
Press Contact
Dominika Szope
Head of Department Press and
Public Relations
Tel: +49 (0) 721 / 8100 – 1220
Denise Rothdiener
Press Assistant
Tel: +49 (0) 721 / 8100 – 1821
E-Mail: presse@zkm.de
www.zkm.de/presse
Image: Anna Halprin: “City Dance”, 1976– 1979
Black and white photo
Photo: Buck O’Kelly
© Anna Halprin
Press Discussion
Thurs, March 8, 2012,
11 a.m.
Opening
Sat, March 17, 2012, 4 p.m.
ZKM_Center for Art and Media
Lorenzstrasse 19 - Karlsruhe
Hours: Wed-Fri 10am-6pm,
Sat-Sun 11am-6pm,
Mon-Tue closed
Admission: adults: € 5,00
reduced/ for groups of ten or more: € 3,00
7 - 17 years: € 2,00
families [max.2 adults+max.3 children under 18 years]:
€ 10,00