Moments

How does one convey and interpret an ephemeral art form like performance? The exhibition Moments presented live acts and developed new formats which featured an active, non-museum-like representation of performance history. Its main focus was on the “heroic” period of performance from the 1960s to the 1980s. During these decades, a number of primarily female performers did much to radically redefine the genre. Artists like Marina Abramović, Graciela Carnevale, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Reinhild Hoffmann, Channa Horwitz, Sanja Iveković, Adrian Piper and Yvonne Rainer re-examined, among other things, male-coded constructions of viewing and behaviour.
The invited artists were asked to document their own historic performances in self-designed installations. A group of younger colleagues, directed by the renowned French choreographer Boris Charmatz, produced a scenic act comprised of ten key moments of performance history, which the Israeli artist Ruti Sela and her film team documented in an artistic-cinematic piece. The resulting film was produced during the course of the exhibition. A group of students from renowned European universities accompanied the entire process. The exhibition oscillated between medial documentation and re-interpretation, memory and first-hand experience. It successfully tied into the current debates about the adequate representation of past performances and presented alternatives to re-enactments and museum-like preservation.

Artistic directors: Boris Charmatz (FR), Sigrid Gareis, Georg Schöllhammer (AT)
Artists: Marina Abramović (USA/RS), Graciela Carnevale (AR), François Chaignaud (FR), Simone Forti (I/USA), Anna Halprin (USA), Nikolaus Hirsch, Lynn Hershman Leeson (USA), Reinhild Hoffmann, Channa Horwitz (USA), Sanja Iveković (HR), Lenio Kaklea (GR), Adrian Piper (USA/D), Johannes Porsch (AT), Yvonne Rainer (USA), Jan Ritsema (NL/F), Ruti Sela (IL), Christine De Smedt (B), Gerald Siegmund, Burkhard Stangl (AT), Meg Stuart (USA/D)

From 8 March to 29 April 2012 at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
The exhibition opens on 17 March 2012 at 4 pm.