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A possible mission statement

Towards a theater of presence and proximity.

A mission statement


After doing theater as an artistwin for 11 years, it's time to answer the question what do we do when we do it. First is to mention, that theater is never done by artists only. It is rather a multilayered process with many involved. Artistic production, artistic process and the logistics involved account for each other. No project is like another as it happens at another time and in other conditions. However we don't follow any determinist theater model, and we also don't see ourselves as victims of times when it is becoming ever more difficult to acquire means for artistic work. The only thing that counts for us is to continue as the only failure in art is giving up.


For a few years now, we're less and less interested in creating and watching choreographies that are executed frontally on a stage, with a clear separation of auditorium and podium. We're rather fascinated to move through environments where the relation of anybody in the space is dynamically negotiated. Environments that facilitate, produce and demand a dense complexity of inter- and cross-connectivity, of processes and partaking. In other words, we're interested in theater as an activity where anybody can become a producer of theater.

 

What matters (...) is the exemplary character of production, which is able, first, to induce other producers to produce, and, second, to put an improved apparatus at their disposal. And this apparatus is better, the more consumers it is able to turn into producers - that is, readers or spectators into collaborators. (Walter Benjamin: The Author as Producer, 1934)

 

Even if we're at times spectators in our own work, there is no passivity in our processes. What we seek the most is proximity to an audience, a mutual acknowledgement of each other's presence; to transgress a taboo at work: an erotic decomposition of the imaginary border between actor and public, process and reception. Erotic, because one is allowed to come closer.


We always conceptualize and prepare environments together with others, but what will happen in them, how artistic activity emerges, is not planned or fixed beforehand. It happens in the opening towards an outside, a collective unveiling of a specific truth of work: isn't is only when we walk or drive on a street that we experience and recognize it as such? There has to be an opening up of possibilities in advance of experience in order for experience to take place. This concept of Martin Heidegger can guide us to leave the theater of the connoisseur, the passive witness that claims the authority of relevant knowledge, and invites us into a theater as a space to spend time in and to be able to make our own experiences: how to knit your own private political body!


Theater as environmentalism characterizes that is has to assert autonomy, that it maintains a resistance, thus claims presence in order to enable a living experience. The environment is the artistic fundament, on which activities proliferate and expand. Proximity can only emerge if there is a distance that is transgressed; distance, once powerful in the regime of the light and sound metaphysics of an impressive theater apparatus, becomes more and more obsolete. Not that the theater has to become and affirm itself as a place for the everyday experience! There is enough space for magic. Only the central control of the course of actions could make place to a manifold of sources of light, sound, imagination. That is when the theater can be re-functionalized by the activities that happen in it. That is when theater can be defined from an actual interest in theater.


Our last works, the Emergence Room and the Entropic Institute, have shown us that there is a public that no longer wants to be passive, no longer seated in-front of something just to witness it. A public that understands that the passive witnessing of any high-intensity execution of controlled out-of-control control obsessions as it is common in theater and choreography today is worn out, as it re-affirms the thrills of a gentrified leisure-time society rather than lending any critical perspective or distance to it. The same is true for the theatrical takeover of anti-globalist activism. Theater as environmentalism is active theater, not theatrical activism!


It is self-evident that nobody is forced into activity. The simple proposal that one can touch things, move in the space, leave notes, document what is there is enough; otherwise parttaking collapses and becomes forced participation where the unprepared participants are always shown-off, made ridiculous or exposed.


For us it is important to address people that decided to share the same environment with us as persons that can all contribute to the artwork. In other words: without you our theater doesn't happen at all. We construct relations, but when they are not made they remain singular and empty in the space.


This is why our theater is a durch-ein-ander (literal translation: through-one-another; the correct translation is mess). Nothing is detached in the space, everything mutually involves everything else, much like in a complex Mobile, where the movement of one element causes all others to move also.


We don't possess our work, we spend it, and we invite others to come and have a walk with it. So be invited in our next environments in Stuttgart, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Gent.
 
 deufert&plischke

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The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Steve Paxton, "Satisfyin' Lover," 1967. Performed at the Whitney Museum, April 20, 1971.

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Photograph by Peter Moore. © 2012 Estate of Peter Moore/VAGA, NYC.

October 15–November 4, 2012

The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019

T 212 708 9400

www.moma.org

MoMA invites six international choreographers to present their work in a dance series guest-curated by Ralph Lemon

Some sweet day is a three-week program of dance performances by contemporary choreographers in the Museum's Marron Atrium. The series, which pairs six internationally renowned choreographers engaged in an intergenerational and cross-cultural dialogue, demonstrates how the current state of dance can address a variety of subjects, including aesthetics, gender, race, and history. Concurrently—by putting a focus on choreography in an institution that traditionally showcases static objects—Some sweet day argues for the extended potentials and possibilities of the museum space.

Each Saturday, the contributing artists and curators will be present for a response following the performances. These conversations will be led by different respondents, among them Daphne A. Brooks (Princeton University), Douglas Crimp (University of Rochester), and Brent Hayes Edwards (Columbia University).

More information on MoMA's Performance Program and a detailed schedule are available at MoMA.org/performance.


Steve Paxton, Satisfyin' Lover and State
Steve Paxton (American, b. 1939) transformed the vocabulary of dance through his contributions to the Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s and his development of the Contact Improvisation movement technique in 1972. For Some sweet day, Paxton presents his seminal postmodern works Satisfyin' Lover (1967) and State (1968), which question the established parameters of dance, such as virtuosity and style, while also addressing the artist's fascination with the ideas of simple everyday movements and the untrained body.

Wednesday, October 17, 1pm
Wednesday, October 17, 4pm
Sunday, October 21, 4pm


Jérôme Bel, The Show Must Go On
Jérôme Bel (French, b.1964) has produced highly conceptual and critical works that expand the boundaries of what dance and choreography can be. At MoMA, Bel stages The Show Must Go On (2001), which, in many respects, serves as a response to the work of the Judson Dance Theatre and Steve Paxton, whose work is shown in the same week.

Saturday, October 20, 1pm
Saturday, October 20, 3pm
Sunday, October 21, 1pm


Faustin Linyekula, What Is Black Music Anyway…/Self-Portraits
Choreographer and director Faustin Linyekula (Congolese, b.1974) creates works that reflect the sociopolitical history and cultural struggles of his native Democratic Republic of Congo. In What Is Black Music Anyway…/Self-Portraits, Linyekula is joined by Congolese guitarist and composer Flamme Kapaya (Congolese, b.1978) and South African singer Hlengiwe Lushaba (South African, b.1982).

Wednesday, October 24, 1pm
Saturday, October 27, 4pm
Sunday, October 28, 4pm


Dean Moss and Laylah Ali, Voluntaries
For his MoMA commission, Voluntaries, Dean Moss (American, b. 1954) invited visual artist Laylah Ali to join him in a work reexamining the legacy of John Brown, a white abolitionist who attempted an armed slave revolt in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, resulting in his capture and execution.

Wednesday, October 24, 1pm
Saturday, October 27, 3pm
Sunday, October 28, 1pm


Kevin Beasley, I Want My Spot Back
In his sculptures, Kevin Beasley (American, b.1985) explores spaces of ambivalence. His contribution to Some sweet day consists of a two-day performance in which he takes on the role of a DJ, mixing slowed-down a cappella tracks by deceased rappers from the 1990s with additional textures, rhythms, and feedback.

Thursday, October 25, 3:30pm
Friday, October 26, 3:30pm


Deborah Hay, Blues
As a founding member of New York's Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s, Deborah Hay (American, b.1941), took part in radically reshaping American dance by opening it up to other art forms and by shifting it away from spectacle toward ordinary, everyday movements. For Some sweet day, Hay contributes a new work that was inspired by Hay's vision of a dance for 11 African American and 15 white American dancers.

Friday, November 2, 1pm
Saturday, November 3, 3pm
Sunday, November 4, 1pm


Sarah Michelson, Devotion Study #3
The choreographic works of Sarah Michelson (British, b. 1964) are recognized for their ongoing and dynamic examination of the formal components and stylized tropes of dance. By highlighting the design and architectural structure of the performance space and dissecting the roles of choreographer and dancer, she explores the potential for new forms of contemporary dance to arise.

Friday, November 2, 4pm
Saturday, November 3, 1pm
Sunday, November 4, 4pm

Organized by Ralph Lemon, guest curator and choreographer; with Jenny Schlenzka, Associate Curator, MoMA PS1; and Jill A. Samuels, Producer, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art. Presented as part of MoMA's ongoing Performance Program, organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art.

Some sweet day is made possible by MoMA's Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by The Modern Women's Fund.


 

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