News
The Swedish Dance History - episode 3 is out - we released it and it was amazing.
This time with more then 250 contributions it's an awesome book, and it's very silver.
Otherwise, left Sweden after a two weeks session with performances with mychoreography at MDT Stockholm. Seven premieres and a bunch of repertoire pieces. Good audience and totally OTT. We had some serious fun.
Today we start working on the PAF Agora publication on location in St Erme.
New work produced for Melanchotopia at Witte De With - grand opening 2 September.
Last of The Mobile Hot Shots highlights the ambiguous and shifting fictions surrounding mass-produced objects. Fictions that in our times are contested both in respect of their existence and possible autonomy and in relation to variations in modes of economical exchange. The piece explores the poetics of objects, those vague moments when the being in the world of objects transform. On the one hand the piece rehearse the object as object - as an autonomous existence independent of human verification (correlationism) – and on the other looks into the differentiation of how objects participate in our present economical reality, where a shift can be experienced diminishing the importance of accumulation of goods in favor of rent and rentability, a shift that puts the very project of modernity out of balance.
In the specific context of cinema the object gains yet another layer of fiction, sliding in and out between the superfluous world of cinema, the tangible and the experienced, this poses questions to the ontology of cinema as object and experience as well as to the object in cinema in respect of image production.
The piece could be said to operate in the crack, nor on the surface or in depth but in the breaking point where the objects autonomy can be understood both as a threat and a way out of our present predicament - concerned with issues such as climate change, corruption, mediation and the understanding of “rights”, yet objects doesn’t necessarily care for humans and doesn’t bother about peak oil. Can a different understanding of objects offer us new perspective of the world and what is important to our lives?
The western world has through out modernity consolidated an understanding of objects connected with strong models of ownership, commodity and exchange value. Historically the accumulation of material value has been constitutive to our society. Over the last 20 – 30 years however we have experienced a fundamental change where what constitute our lives and social relations is rent and the ability to rent and produce rentability. In other words Western society today is concerned with accumulation constituted around abstract circulation of value. In this respect the object can be said to have lost its primacy and is now just an appendix to a society organized through “pure” management. What is circulated is value as such, and it is the circulation “as such” that is the very center.
Artistic production is intimately connected to general modes of production and circulation, when modes of production change the understanding of art must also transform. This work reflects or perhaps even anticipates the transformation, of what status the object can have in an exhibition, especially in connection to a state/city supported museum/kunsthalle. Hence this work emphasizing the movement or circulation of objects not their status and/or location.
The objects displayed in Pathé is not a sculpture or installation in a conventional sense, but consist of “rentable” objects. The work emphasizes the performativ capacity given to the objects and how the potential circulation of them is generative and productive. The piece will not be accompanied by an announcement that the objects can or should be taken away, but for the production “miniature” rumors will be spread, in certain communities, that these objects can be rented. If the objects disappear that’s not a problem but they are not there to disappear. It’s precisely not about “taking” but renting yet there is no contracts or paper, you rent so to say from a common, from a shared resource, which also offers the renter to return things after use.
The objects are carefully chosen precisely to question the difference between “taking” – the accumulation of goods – and renting – the circulation of goods. However, the objects are also selected in respect of societal activities, rituals and formations of knowledge as in this particular case in relation to cinema.
Performative in this context is to be understood in respect of how the work is generative of activity, i.e. it is not first of all what the objects represent [wedding dress equals a certain ritual connected to security, capitalism, consolidation of hierarchies, ownership, value etc.] but instead what they can become productive of.
To emphasize the performativity of the work a parallel activity will be taken up by the artist. Through out the period the artist will submit a blog-post (daily) on a blog associated to the exhibition. An edited version of the blog will be published as a book at the end of the exhibition. The artist will not be on location during the period but so to say generate activity out of the piece present in Pathé. The book will also function as a non-causal/linear documentation of the piece in the exhibition.
SPANGBERGIANISM OUT NOW
Spangbergianism is now out, 174 pages of reactive hysteria packed up in shiny black paperback. The book's first release took place in Vienna during Impulstanz on 29 July and the book already stir discussion and desire for revenge (we are still waiting for reviews). During the up coming months the book will be released in a bunch of dance festivals and venues including: Stockholm, St Erme, Paris, Brussels, Graz, New York, Mexico City, Madrid, Bologna, Zagreb, Belgrad, Novi Sad, Istanbul and of course Sydney. The book was printed in 4000 copies and is distributed for free thus making it impossibe for anybody dance doer or maker not to read it. If you are not close to something you can also find a PDF if you click here.
Wow, it's gonna be a few very exiting months to come, to see if the dance world is still alive or if it has become one of those dead horses one should definately not ride.
Read it and suffer.
On 29 July a new group piece was pre-premiered during Impulstanz in Vienna. A group of nine worked hard ass for ten days and presented a show called Geo Trauma Dance - super slow, very high, it's a piece on the dark side of psychedelia - no to self-enhancement and yes to becoming blank.
The program text said something like this:
The grey between black and white has many names: tolerance, difference, possibility, negotiation. Those terms all assume knowledge in respect of measurement [length], something is continuous and divisible. The performance you are about to experience proposes that what is inbetween black and white is blank and that is the space we wish to visit tonight, a space that is non-continuous and indivisible that open to width and is drawn by a compass the concurrently unfolds from the zero of the center toward whatever directions. The blank opens to a non-myoptic vision that resist subjectivation and instead offers a schematic spatial image of the object's independent reality.
The team is and was phantastic: Carina, Jana, Bosmat, Keith, Ruairi, Varena, Pepa, Krööt (our set-designer), Alexandra, Helga.
The piece will pre-premiere coming Spring or actually when the co-producers decide.
Helmut Plöbst reviewed the piece in Der Standard - translated into something more or less like this - not bad...
A similar way of thinking [along the lines of Salamon's approach to Cage] has apparently influenced the "Geo Trauma Dance" - also in the Kasino - that was developed by the Swedish artist and author Mårten Spångberg together with a group of dancers in just two weeks. Just like John Cage's involvement with the Zen Buddhism never degenerated into esoteric self-care, the coming together of these Geo-traumatized are only subtly hinting towards the unearthly.
Calmly, sometimes with tender irony against our hectic burn-out society, with an emphasize on synchronous movement and a carefully planned sequence the young performers are joint together through a persistent inner dance.
An absolutely beautiful work with many magical moments, that looks like a mystical ritual as it communicates its content through a poetic form and operates contrary to all virtuosity and logics of efficiency. What is presented as something slightly naive is the exact opposite: a targeted strategy that is directed against the nailing of the world through an "objective" reality. Because it is precisely in the societal that this "object" becomes subjective and acquire ideologically manipulated meaning. In any case Geo Trauma Dance never become boring.
And some recent history,
21 June talk at the Muzeum in Warsaw, a new episode of Talking To Aliens - this time less about aliens but instead addressing structural change in the management of museums and the correlation between general modes of production, contemporary economy and the financialization of subjectivity.
After giving workshop in Mexico City ending with an outdoor performance featuring sixteen performers, Fat Boy Slim, talkshow and human sculptures, the journey continued to host the theory program under the frame of In-presentables festival in Madrid. Lectures and seminars with among others Franco Bifo, Lars Bang Larsen, Olav Westphalen, Valeria Graziano and Mårten Spångberg.
For City Excavations the pre-program for the 2011 Gothenburg Biennale a second episode of Talking To Aliens was presented under the disguise of The Grand Assembly. The lecture slash filmshoot came out excellent, especially an interview part perfected by Krõõt Juurak and Patrik Haggren.
The summer continues with the finalizing of Spangbergianism - the book that will premiere the 29 July during Impulstanz. Before Vienna a new version of Production, together with Xavier Le Roy, will go up in K20 Dusseldorf, opening 17 July.
During this years Impulstanz Mårten Spångberg will give a workshop under the title Trauma Dance, two weeks of searching for the inanimate in the human using musical instruments and a musical score by Helmut Lachenmann. Performance the 29 July at Casino, with sixteen dancers.
Thereafter it is PAF time with ten or so days of Summer University with magical guest and hysterical parties.