HOW TO DANCE
ON THE INTERFERENCE OF
WITH ART – TIME-BASED ARTS AND ART SPACES
For quite some time now, visitors to contemporary exhibitions
have encountered dancing, humming, speaking or sweating
bodies that confront the object centricity of the museum in
diverse performance formats. This tendency towards “bringing
to life” the museum through performance art and live art is
thanks to the influence of neo-/avantgarde demands in the
20th century for an ‘extension of the arts’ (electively into ‘life,’
into the non-artistic or into various art genres). This has effectively resulted in a series of new forms and genres that are distinguished most of all by characteristically being performative
and hybrid. Criticism of art institutions – most of all, of the
museum – has belonged to the recurring rhetoric of this search
for transgression.
A glimpse at the contemporary art scene reveals a tendency
towards performative formats in the museum business. In
exhibitions such as “I promise it’s political” (Cologne 2002),
“Das lebendige Museum” (Frankfurt am Main 2003), “The
Impossible Theatre” (London, Warsaw, Vienna 2005), “The
World as a Stage” (London 2007), “rétrospective” (Barcelona
2012) or “Eleven / Twelve / Thirteen /Fourteen Rooms” (Manchester, Essen, Sydney, Basel 2011 –2014), dance, performance
or live art artists such as Xavier Le Roy, La Ribot or Jérôme Bel
not only carry out performances in museum space, but they
also design and perform entire exhibitions. If institutions such
as London’s Tate Modern opens a temporary performance
space – The Tanks – for ‘Art in Action’ and Boris Charmatz
founds a consistently emerging Museé de la danse, it seems
appropriate to contemplate the relationship of temporal and
spatial dimensions of art, and further, to question the role of
the audience:
How can time-based works of art be conceived, produced
and collected for and by museum spaces? Which gaps or shifts
in perception result? And how great a role does the temporal
framework of the museum or theatre play in the reception
and evaluation of these performances?
These questions have been taken up by the Foreign Affairs
Festival 2014 as an occasion to ask artists, curators and
academics to reflect together on the production, presentation
and reception of contemporary live art formats.
EIGN
AIRS
–13.7.14
MUSÉE DE LA DANSE , which was initiated by Boris
Charmatz in 2009, has its roots in his directorship of the
Centre choréographique national de Rennes et de Bretagne
that began in 2009, and the initial renaming act. Proceeding
from the question of how one sets up a productive relationship
between the ephemeral, proliferating nature of dance and the
static, fixed and long-lasting nature of museums, Charmatz
explores the interlacing of performance, dance, the visual arts
and theory in several projects. A central goal of this project is
the “idea of creating a new public space for – and by – dance”
(Charmatz).
The “experimental assemblages” (Noémie Solomon) that have
resulted are made up of exhibition projects such as “éxpo zéro”
(various venues 2009 –2011, 2014), “brouillon” (Rennes 2010,
Brussels 2013) or the “The Artist Lab” as part of “Moments.
An Exhibition of Performance in 10 Acts” (Karlsruhe 2012),
dance pieces and projects that are performed in parks, museums or libraries (“Levée des conflits” 2010 –2014, “20 dancers
for the XX century” 2012 –2014) as well as more object-based
exhibitions (“Photo” 2012) and dance workshops.
Along this route, a travelling museum is formed that temporarily settles at festivals or in art spaces like the Argos Art
Center in Brussels, the ZKM Karlsruhe, the MoMA in New York
or the Berliner Kunstsaele. In the later – such as in the format
“expo zéro” – a collective of architects, philosophers and performers are invited to fill the empty spaces for several days
with thoughts, gestures and actions proceeding from their
personal answers to the question: What would a museum of
dance be for you?
One crucial aim of such a “’performative form’ of discussion”
(Charmatz) and other related formats is to confront the inherent contradiction in dance’s ephemeral nature and the durability of museums with alternative models of time. This includes
performances such as “étrangler le temps” (2009) and “Levée
des conflits” (2010 –2014), in which moments of time extension
and endless repetitions are worked on, as well as the dance
pieces “Flip Book” and “20 dancers for the XX century” (Rennes
2012; New York 2013; Berlin 2014) and “50 years of dance” (including Paris, Vienna 2009), in which forms of movement from
20th century cultural history are re-performed with fragments
from dance and performance art. This is done by applying a
specific temporal modus for each piece – as solos performed in
a loop, for example, or formats resembling a flip-book.
Not least of all, the fascination of the Musée de la danse lies
in how – through persistent questions, new creations and by
docking onto the most diverse kinds of institutions and public
spaces – practical and conceptual resistance between the
fields of the arts surfaces and can be incorporated. Or in the
words of Boris Charmatz: “One of the particularities of this
museum is to integrate forms of rejection.”
FORE
AFFA
26.6.
Barbara Gronau & Jan Dammel
2 JULY 2014
SYMPOSIUM
PROGRAMME
17:00 Welcome by Matthias von Hartz & Barbara Gronau
17:10
Lecture by Dorothea von Hantelmann
on different modalities and economies of time in the visual and the
performing arts and their formats such as exhibition and performance
17:30 Talk: La Ribot & Christian Falsnaes, chaired by Jörn Schafaff
on the relationship between exhibiting and performing
18:30 Talk: Catherine Wood & Katleen van Langendonck, chaired by Jörn Schafaff
on the significance of institution and audience at the intersection of
visual and performing / time-based arts
19:30 end of first part
20:00 Boris Charmatz “Levée des conflits”
(Ticket Office: downstairs, [email protected], ph.+49 30 254 89 100)
EIGN
AIRS
–13.7.14
FORE
AFFA
26.6.
21:45 Artist-Talk: Boris Charmatz & Franz Anton Cramer
on the “Musée de la danse” and the works presented in the festival
Participants:
BORIS CHARMATZ Dancer and choreographer Boris
Charmatz is well known for works including “Aatt enen
tionon” (1996) and “enfant” (2011). While maintaining
an extensive touring schedule, he also participates in
improvisational events on a regular basis and continues to work as a performer (with Anne Teresa De
Keersmaeker and Tino Sehgal). Director of the Rennes
and Britanny National Choreographic Centre since
2009, Boris Charmatz has transformed the centre into
a Musée de la danse – a dancing museum. Projects to
date include “préfiguration”, ”expo zéro”, ”héliogravures”, ”rebutoh”, ”service commandé” (on commission), “brouillon” (rough draft), “Jérôme Bel en 3 sec.
30 sec. 3 min. 30 min et 3 h”. Charmatz was associate
artist at the 2011 Festival d’Avignon, he was invited
at MoMA (New York) in 2013 for “Musée de la danse:
Three Collective Gestures“.
FRANZ ANTON CRAMER is Senior Researcher at the
Inter-University Centre for Dance / Universität der
Künste, Berlin, where he co-directed the BA-course
“Contemporary Dance, Context, Choreography“ from
2007 till 2010, together with Gisela Müller and Boris
Charmatz. 2004 to 2006 he was Researcher in
residence at the Centre National de la Danse near
Paris and between 2007 and 2013 a Fellow at the
Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. Together
with Barbara Büscher he founded the e-journal
“MAP — Media Archive Performance” in 2009.
CHRISTIAN FALSNAES born 1980 in Copenhagen,
lives and works in Berlin. Educated at the Academy
of Fine Arts, Vienna. Selected exhibitions include Art
Basel, “Statements” with PSM / “Vertigo of reality”,
Akademie der Künste, Berlin / “Formations of bodies”,
KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin / “Ihre Geschichten”, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn / “Grundfrage”,
Crac Alsace, Altkirch / “Entweder/oder”, Haus am
Waldsee, Berlin / “ACTS”, Museum of Contemporary
Art, Roskilde, Denmark / “ELIXIR”, PSM, Berlin.
DOROTHEA VON HANTELMANN born in 1969 in
Hamburg, is documenta professor at Kunsthochschule / University of Kassel. The main focus of her
research is contemporary art and the social function
of art exhibitions. Among her recent publications are
“How to Do Things with Art: The Meaning of Art’s
Performativity“ (2010) and “Die Ausstellung. Politik
eines Rituals“ (ed. with C. Meister, 2010).
JÖRN SCHAFAFF is a Research Associate at the Colla-
borative Research Centre “Aesthetic Experiences and
the Dissolution of Artistic Limits” at Freie Universität
Berlin. He is currently writing a treatise on “situation”
as a concept of artistic presentation and about the
relationship between exhibiting and performing. From
2009 to 2010, he contributed to the institution and
development of the course “Cultures of the Curatorial”
at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. He is the author
of “How We Gonna Behave? Philippe Parreno. Angewandtes Kino” (2008) and co-editor of “Cultures of
the Curatorial” (2012), “Kunst-Begriffe der Gegenwart”
(2013), “Assign & Arrange: Methodologies of Presentation in Art and Dance” (2014) and “Timing: On the
Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting” (2014).
LA RIBOT born 1962, in Madrid. Early on she becomes
an independent choreographer and performer of her
own work. With the project “piezas distinguidas”, La
Ribot stands out in the international contemporary
dance and live art scene, in particular with “13 piezas
distinguidas” (1993), “Más distinguidas” (1997),
“Still distinguished” (2000) and “Panoramix” (2003).
She collaborates with Mathilde Monnier for their
duo “Gustavia” (2008) and with other artists for
“Laughing Hole” (2006).
KATLEEN VAN LANGENDONCK born 1971, studied
Germanic Philology / Literature in Leuven and Paris.
She worked as a literary critic (for “De Standaard”
i.a.) from 1994 until 1997 and was responsible for
performing arts programming at deSingel international arts centre in Antwerp from 1997 to 2002.
From 2002 to 2007 she had been a member of the
academic staff at Antwerp University, where she
lectured in dance history and dance analysis, did
research on tactility in the performing arts, and
co-coordinated the inter-university post-master in
Theatre Studies. Since 2007 Katleen Van Langendonck
is responsable for the artistic programme of the
Brussels performing arts center Kaaitheater, together
with Guy Gypens. She has, amongst other projects,
initiated Performatik, the Brussels biënnale for
performing arts (4th edition: 18 to 28 march 2015),
a collaboration with other Brussels institutions from
the visual as well as the performance arts field
(Argos, Bozar, Wiels amongst others).
In cooperation with Barbara Gronau and Jan Dammel (Universität der Künste, Berlin)
CATHERINE WOOD is curator of Contemporary Art /
Performance at Tate Modern. She co-curated the exhibitions “The World as a Stage” at Tate Modern in 2007,
“Pop Life” in 2010 and curated “A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance” in 2012, as well as co-directing
the opening programme for the Tate Tanks in 2012,
titled, “Art in Action”. She has programmed numerous
performance works at Tate since 2003 including
works by Mark Leckey, Joan Jonas, Guy de Cointet,
Jiri Kovanda and Sturtevant and initiated the online
project, “Performance Room” in 2011. Wood is author
of “Yvonne Rainer: The Mind is a Muscle” (2007,
Afterall / MIT press) and the forthcoming publication,
“Performance in Contemporary Art” (Tate Publishing,
due 2015). A regular contributor to “Afterall”, “Artforum” and “Mousse magazines”, she has also written
numerous catalogue essays, recently on Joachim
Koester, Piotr Uklanski, and Sung Hwan Kim.
BARBARA GRONAU is Professor for theory and history
of the theatre at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. In
2006, she obtained a PhD at Freie Universität Berlin
with a thesis on the interferences of visual art and theatre (“Theaterinstallationen. Performative Räume bei
Beuys, Boltanski, Kabakov”, Munich 2011), which received the Joseph Beuys-Award for Research. After working as an associate lecturer at FU Berlin and a guest
lecturer at Bern University and others, she was appointed Junior Professor at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich-HeineUniversität. Barbara Gronau has worked as a dramaturg for numerous theatre productions and as curator
of various performance festivals at Hebbel am Ufer and
Radialsystem Berlin. One of her current research projects is “Standstill – Scenes of stasis and latency in the
arts”, a project of the German Research Foundation.
JAN DAMMEL is a tutor in the performing arts department at the Universität der Künste, Berlin and a student assistant at the research project “Standstill – Scenes of stasis and latency in the arts”. He is currently
reading for a Master’s Degree in Theatre Studies at
Freie Universität Berlin; his B.A.-thesis “Dance as
sculpture?” investigated temporality in “Levée des conflits”. He worked as a dramaturgy assistant for productions at Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and the Maxim Gorki
Theater and most recently as assistant to artists Sarah
Van Laamswerde and Ivo Dimchev at the festival
Performatik at Kaaitheater Brussels in 2013.