Atarimae-no-koto and Knotunknot for Frankfurter Positionen 2011
Dana Caspersen/William Forsythe
Knotunknot
21-23 January 2011
Opening:
Friday, 21 January 2011, 9-10 pm
Dana Caspersen is an award-winning performing artist and a trained conflict mediator. Born in the United States, she has worked in Frankfurt, Germany since 1988 as a member of the Ballet Frankfurt and the Forsythe Company. Caspersen has contributed to and created numerous works for the stage as a dancer, actress, choreographer and text author. A published poet and essayist, her written texts have formed the basis for works by William Forsythe. Recently, her research into the dynamics of conflict situations has led her to develop projects, such as Knotunknot, which explore how the persistent structures and systems that produce violence can be transformed by people living inside those systems.
William Forsythe is recognized as one of the world’s foremost choreographers. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet, morphing its classical repertoire into a dynamic 21st-century art form. Forsythe’s deep interest in the fundamental principles of organization has led him to produce a wide range of installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation. He lives in Frankfurt/Main (Germany).
Sadaharu Horio
ATARIMAE-NO-KOTO (A matter of course)
2–6 February 2011
Opening: Wed 02/02/2011, 7-9 pm
FRANKFURT LAB
Schmidtstraße 12
60326 Frankfurt/Main
www.frankfurt-lab.de
As a member of the legendary avant-garde group Gutai, the Japanese artist Sadaharu Horio (born 1939 in Kobe, Japan) has been working with the topic Atarimae-no-koto (“A matter of course”) for many years. With approximately one hundred exhibitions, actions, and performances per year, Horio represents an influential position within the Japanese contemporary art scene. However, up until now, Horio’s work has had only a modest presence in western exhibition contexts. In 2003, together with around forty artist friends, he founded the group KUKI (“air”), whose members execute projects with him at respective locations.
Gutai was a movement that originated in 1954, and, in the western art world, reactions to it ranged from sniggers to outright criticism. If the goal was, according to the manifesto, “to lift abstract art into a new sphere and celebrate pure artistic creation,” then this should be, even today, understood literally as concrete instructions to be applied to Gutai’s diverse actions, paintings, sculptures, exhibitions, and installations in public parks and shopping malls. Gutai purposely turned away from traditional artistic production, in an attempt to remain undefined and defying categorization. The Japanese artists demonstrated a lightness which is evident in the current work of the individual Gutai artists.
Sadaharu Horio was a member of Gutai from 1966 until its breakup in 1972. In the context of the Frankfurt Positionen 2011, he will develop an object which could be simply described as folded paper. Together with assistants from his team KUKI, Horio publicly presents the process of creating the object over the course of five days. The artwork gradually emerges from a succession of performances without previously determined steps, which remain in relationship with the space and its conditions. The individual stages of development, from the folding of paper in large format to the experimental forms of paint application, are made visible to the public.
Curators: Daniel Birnbaum, William Forsythe, Nikolaus Hirsch
Coordinator: Jule Hillgärtner, Julian Gabriel Richter
Press Contact Knotunknot: mechthild.ruehl@theforsythecompany.de
Press Contact ATARIMAE-NO-KOTO: jule.hillgaertner@staedelschule.de
Press Contact Frankfurter Positionen: sigrid.scherer@bhf-bank.com
The Forsythe Company
Schmidtstraße 12
D-60326 Frankfurt / Main
www.theforsythecompany.com
The Forsythe Company is supported by the city of Dresden and the state of Saxony as well as the city of Frankfurt am Main and the state of Hesse. The Forsythe Company is Company-in-Residence of both the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden and the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt am Main.
With special thanks to Ms. Susanne Klatten for supporting The Forsythe Company.
Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule
Dürerstraße 10
D-60596 Frankfurt / Main
www.staedelschule.de
“Knotunknot” and “Atarimae-no-koto” are projects by The Forsythe Company, Städelschule, and Portikus for the Frankfurter Positionen 2011 – initiated by BHF-BANK-Stiftung.
Since 2001, the Festival Frankfurter Positionen provides a space designated to the promotion of experience and insight: held about every second year, it attempts to define a position regarding the ongoing changes in society and in everyday life by means of various fields of the arts and by accompanying analytical statements. The Frankfurter Positionen is supported by an extensive cultural network, consisting of more than 15 reknown institutions from the city of Frankfurt. The 2011 edition takes place from January 21st till February 9th.
