Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz: Moving Backwards

Starting with the feeling of being pushed backwards by recent reactionary backlashes, Moving Backwards explores resistance practices, combining post-modern choreography and urban dance with guerrilla techniques and elements of queer underground culture. A film installation with five performers from diverse dance backgrounds complicates the notion of backward movements and their temporal and spatial meaning. Parts of the walks, solos, and group dances are carried out backwards, others are digitally reversed, creating doubt and ambiguities for the installation as a whole. In an environment that the artists call an “abstract club,” the uncanny experience of temporal and spatial insecurity is complemented by a moment of reflection on the planetary politics of “moving backwards” with letters written to the audience by a number of artists, choreographers, activists, and scholars.

These statements alongside video stills, exhibition views and essays are gathered in an eponymous catalogue, published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale.

The publication includes statements by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Azar Mahmoudian, Judith Butler, Fouza Al-Youssef, Antke Engel, Patrisse Cullors, Trajal Harrell, Marwa Arsanios, Mirkan Deniz, Treva Ellison, Ahmed Refaat and Andrea Thal, Nikita Dhawan, Eve Tuck and Françoise Vergès. It comprises an essay by curator Charlotte Laubard on the viewers’ experience of Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz’s installation at the Swiss Pavilion; an essay by scholar André Lepecki on queer temporalities and poetics in relation to the notion of “moving backwards”; as well as a postface by Marianne Burki, Head of visual arts at the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

The catalogue is edited by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz with Charlotte Laubard, curator of the Swiss Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, and is published by Skira Genève. The catalogue can be ordered now at www.skira.net, and will be available to purchase at the Venice Biennale bookshop, among others.

Closing performances at the Swiss Pavilion during the Biennale’s final weekend
During the closing weekend of the 58th Venice Biennale, taking place from November 22–24, 2019, the Swiss Pavilion presents reading performances by artists and performers Marbles Jumbo Radio and Julie Cunningham.

In the large installation of Moving Backwards at the Swiss Pavilion, artists Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz invited performers to experiment with backwards movements in a newly commissioned film. Alongside Marbles Jumbo Radio and Julie Cunningham, participating performers in the film include Werner Hirsch, Latifa Laâbissi and Nach. During the opening week of the 58th Venice Biennale, Marbles Jumbo Radio and Werner Hirsch have performed intimate readings to the audience.

These final performances take place in the garden and sculpture hall of the Swiss Pavilion, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday November 22–24, every day from 10am to 1pm, and from 3pm to 5pm.

Find further information here.