Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score – Lisbon 2021
/5
Following its activation in Leuven (Belgium) and in Paris, “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score” went on view from 16 September to 24 October 2021 at Galerias Municipais – Galeria Quadrum in Lisbon.
Curator: Pierre Bal-Blanc
Choreographer: Manuel Pelmuş
Performers: Jack Hauser, Luiza da Silva Gabriel, João dos Santos Martins, Adriano Vicente
With works and performances by: Milan Adamčiak, Geta Brătescu, Anna Daučíková, Josef Dabernig, VALIE EXPORT, Stano Filko, Tomislav Gotovac, Sanja Iveković, Anna Jermolaewa, Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, Katalin Ladik, Simon Leung, Dóra Maurer, Karel Miler, Paul Neagu, Manuel Pelmuş, Petr Štembera, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, Slaven Tolj, Goran Trbuljak, and Artur Żmijewski, as well as a short film made at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna by Pierre Bal-Blanc, where the first “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body” was presented in 2019.
“Collective Exibition for a Single Body – The Private Score” was commissioned by the Kontakt Collection and co-produced by Tanzquartier Wien.
Though transient in its conception, the notion of agency has been particularly strong within the domain of performance art, which can be enacted as a means of rupturing our everyday routines. What does it mean to present documentation of ephemeral acts in public that were carried out thousands of kilometers away on the other side of Europe 50 years ago or even earlier? Myriad rationales are at work, here. First, the sociopolitical experience of the two geographical regions at issue here is somewhat analogous, despite which fact there has been no reappraisal of their historically important art production or related programming in local institutions. While Portugal was ruled by the Estado Novo dictatorship until 1974, when the Carnation Revolution brought down the fascist regime, the Cold War years saw an equally palpable climate of oppression prevail in the former Eastern Bloc until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
In Portugal, the Salazar regime censored the press and maintained a repressive apparatus that limited freedom of movement and speech in public space. Like in former Eastern Europe, the repression was such that artistic activity took place predominantly in the secluded domain of the private atelier. In 1969, Ernesto de Sousa introduced performative and process-based art practices by organizing the first meeting of the Oficina Experimental and the subsequent Guincho meeting and picnic in Rinchoa.(1) The advent of conceptual art that interfered with the status quo was further amplified upon de Sousa’s return to Lisbon with a set of slides and the catalogue of Harald Szeemann's documenta 5 in 1972, which he presented to his peers.(2) The exhibition “Alternativa Zero” (1977) at the Galeria Nacional de Arte Moderna in Belem, which was considered the first convention of conceptual practice in the aftermath of the April 1974 revolution, is where De Sousa introduced the umbrella term “aesthetic operator”. In his letter of invitation to said aesthetic operators, he stated that “le public sera l’auteur reel” (the audience will be the real author), adding a stamp that read, “All Your Mail And Documentation Will Be Exhibited A”.(3)
Historically, Portugal’s contact with Eastern Europe has been rather sporadic. In Portugal, migrant workers offering their services in areas such as construction or agriculture often experienced exploitative working conditions. And when the Ukrainian citizen Ihor Homeniuk arrived at Lisbon’s Portela Airport in March 2020, the country's immigration officials tortured the man to death.
The subject of forced migration was also addressed in the performative score arranged by Pierre Bal-Blanc for Galerias Municipais. Anna Jermolaewa’s video “Research for Sleeping Positions” (2006) refers to Viennese train stations that served as entrance hubs for migrants from Central and Eastern Europe. When there was no place to go, a simple bench provided a modicum of comfort upon arrival. The strain of dislocation and the sacrifices and humiliations suffered during migration come to the fore in Artur Żmijewski’s silent film “Glimpse / Spojrzenie” (2016/17), for which the artist visited and portrayed migrants from the African continent housed at makeshift camps in Paris and Calais. Can the encounter with the distressed sensitize the viewer in a way that leads to humane behavior and gentle encounters?
As I sit writing, the media report that migrants at the Polish-Belarussian border have been denied access to water by a police patrol. The sound of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, K. 626, recorded at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna, spills over from the nearby gallery but is overpowered by the noise of planes taking off from nearby Portela Airport. As I step out of the office, I see the gestures from the exhibition score’s repertoire: Július Koller´s “Horizontal Man (U.F.O.) South Bohemian Mimesis” (1981) stands out. A performer stands up straight, pointing one hand to the floor the other to the sky, thereby simultaneously questioning the status quo of the site s/he is standing on and the potential of the surrounding universe. And visible in a corner between an office building and a garden wall within the modernist Coruchéus complex is Stano Filko’s “HAPPSOC IV, Travel in Space” (1967), which shows the performer recreating a rocket-posture, as if s/he were about to take off into another universe at any second.
The performances re-enacted in Lisbon, stemming from the historical context of the former Socialist countries, allude to issues including movement between territories and the policing of public space. These performances are seen by the gallery’s visitors as well as other users frequenting its open-air café or public library. Back when Bal-Blanc was formulating his initial plans to site the performances for “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score” on Rua dos Poços dos Negros, he intended to refer to the area as a graveyard for slaves who fell victim to the 16th-century pandemics and thus contribute to a decolonizing narrative. But ultimately, gallery visitors were instead confronted with a set of gestures articulating the rupturing and pausing of everyday routines in an analogy to the original performances, bringing us closer to notions of isolation, political oppression, and migration (subjects anything but alien to Portuguese people who emigrated to France or the United States during the 20th century). In this way, Bal-Blanc’s project affirms that curating is not a purely formal undertaking or something that occurs in a vacuum. The choice of venue and mode of presentation for this the collective exhibition, amplified via a sequence of live performative re-enactments, triggers manifold references, including numerous references to global migration.
Tobi Maier
(1) See also OEI #80/81, The Zero Alternative, 2018, p. 7.
(2) That same year, he organized the exhibition “Do Vazio à Pró Vocação” (From Emptiness to Pro-Vocation) as part of AICA at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes; two years later, he organized “Projectos-Ideias" (Project-Ideas) at the same venue.
(3) Document from Isabel Alves collection / Estate of Ernesto de Sousa reproduced in OEI #80/81, The Zero Alternative, 2018, p. 23.
Tobi Maier is a curator, a writer, and director of the Municipal Galleries in Lisbon.
April 2022
Curator: Pierre Bal-Blanc
Choreographer: Manuel Pelmuş
Performers: Jack Hauser, Luiza da Silva Gabriel, João dos Santos Martins, Adriano Vicente
With works and performances by: Milan Adamčiak, Geta Brătescu, Anna Daučíková, Josef Dabernig, VALIE EXPORT, Stano Filko, Tomislav Gotovac, Sanja Iveković, Anna Jermolaewa, Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, Katalin Ladik, Simon Leung, Dóra Maurer, Karel Miler, Paul Neagu, Manuel Pelmuş, Petr Štembera, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, Slaven Tolj, Goran Trbuljak, and Artur Żmijewski, as well as a short film made at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna by Pierre Bal-Blanc, where the first “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body” was presented in 2019.
“Collective Exibition for a Single Body – The Private Score” was commissioned by the Kontakt Collection and co-produced by Tanzquartier Wien.
Though transient in its conception, the notion of agency has been particularly strong within the domain of performance art, which can be enacted as a means of rupturing our everyday routines. What does it mean to present documentation of ephemeral acts in public that were carried out thousands of kilometers away on the other side of Europe 50 years ago or even earlier? Myriad rationales are at work, here. First, the sociopolitical experience of the two geographical regions at issue here is somewhat analogous, despite which fact there has been no reappraisal of their historically important art production or related programming in local institutions. While Portugal was ruled by the Estado Novo dictatorship until 1974, when the Carnation Revolution brought down the fascist regime, the Cold War years saw an equally palpable climate of oppression prevail in the former Eastern Bloc until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
In Portugal, the Salazar regime censored the press and maintained a repressive apparatus that limited freedom of movement and speech in public space. Like in former Eastern Europe, the repression was such that artistic activity took place predominantly in the secluded domain of the private atelier. In 1969, Ernesto de Sousa introduced performative and process-based art practices by organizing the first meeting of the Oficina Experimental and the subsequent Guincho meeting and picnic in Rinchoa.(1) The advent of conceptual art that interfered with the status quo was further amplified upon de Sousa’s return to Lisbon with a set of slides and the catalogue of Harald Szeemann's documenta 5 in 1972, which he presented to his peers.(2) The exhibition “Alternativa Zero” (1977) at the Galeria Nacional de Arte Moderna in Belem, which was considered the first convention of conceptual practice in the aftermath of the April 1974 revolution, is where De Sousa introduced the umbrella term “aesthetic operator”. In his letter of invitation to said aesthetic operators, he stated that “le public sera l’auteur reel” (the audience will be the real author), adding a stamp that read, “All Your Mail And Documentation Will Be Exhibited A”.(3)
Historically, Portugal’s contact with Eastern Europe has been rather sporadic. In Portugal, migrant workers offering their services in areas such as construction or agriculture often experienced exploitative working conditions. And when the Ukrainian citizen Ihor Homeniuk arrived at Lisbon’s Portela Airport in March 2020, the country's immigration officials tortured the man to death.
The subject of forced migration was also addressed in the performative score arranged by Pierre Bal-Blanc for Galerias Municipais. Anna Jermolaewa’s video “Research for Sleeping Positions” (2006) refers to Viennese train stations that served as entrance hubs for migrants from Central and Eastern Europe. When there was no place to go, a simple bench provided a modicum of comfort upon arrival. The strain of dislocation and the sacrifices and humiliations suffered during migration come to the fore in Artur Żmijewski’s silent film “Glimpse / Spojrzenie” (2016/17), for which the artist visited and portrayed migrants from the African continent housed at makeshift camps in Paris and Calais. Can the encounter with the distressed sensitize the viewer in a way that leads to humane behavior and gentle encounters?
As I sit writing, the media report that migrants at the Polish-Belarussian border have been denied access to water by a police patrol. The sound of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, K. 626, recorded at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna, spills over from the nearby gallery but is overpowered by the noise of planes taking off from nearby Portela Airport. As I step out of the office, I see the gestures from the exhibition score’s repertoire: Július Koller´s “Horizontal Man (U.F.O.) South Bohemian Mimesis” (1981) stands out. A performer stands up straight, pointing one hand to the floor the other to the sky, thereby simultaneously questioning the status quo of the site s/he is standing on and the potential of the surrounding universe. And visible in a corner between an office building and a garden wall within the modernist Coruchéus complex is Stano Filko’s “HAPPSOC IV, Travel in Space” (1967), which shows the performer recreating a rocket-posture, as if s/he were about to take off into another universe at any second.
The performances re-enacted in Lisbon, stemming from the historical context of the former Socialist countries, allude to issues including movement between territories and the policing of public space. These performances are seen by the gallery’s visitors as well as other users frequenting its open-air café or public library. Back when Bal-Blanc was formulating his initial plans to site the performances for “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score” on Rua dos Poços dos Negros, he intended to refer to the area as a graveyard for slaves who fell victim to the 16th-century pandemics and thus contribute to a decolonizing narrative. But ultimately, gallery visitors were instead confronted with a set of gestures articulating the rupturing and pausing of everyday routines in an analogy to the original performances, bringing us closer to notions of isolation, political oppression, and migration (subjects anything but alien to Portuguese people who emigrated to France or the United States during the 20th century). In this way, Bal-Blanc’s project affirms that curating is not a purely formal undertaking or something that occurs in a vacuum. The choice of venue and mode of presentation for this the collective exhibition, amplified via a sequence of live performative re-enactments, triggers manifold references, including numerous references to global migration.
Tobi Maier
(1) See also OEI #80/81, The Zero Alternative, 2018, p. 7.
(2) That same year, he organized the exhibition “Do Vazio à Pró Vocação” (From Emptiness to Pro-Vocation) as part of AICA at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes; two years later, he organized “Projectos-Ideias" (Project-Ideas) at the same venue.
(3) Document from Isabel Alves collection / Estate of Ernesto de Sousa reproduced in OEI #80/81, The Zero Alternative, 2018, p. 23.
Tobi Maier is a curator, a writer, and director of the Municipal Galleries in Lisbon.
April 2022