SPECTACULAR The Art of Action
April – November, 2003
Museum Kunst Palast
Ehrenhof 4-5
40479 Düsseldorf
Phone: +49 211 8922460
www.museum-kunst-palast.de
A Program on Performance and The Art Institution
Image: John Bock, ‘A gentleman works when a gentleman works a work’ (2002) Photo: Kunt Klaßen
SPECTACULAR The Art of Action
April 26 & June 17 & June 21 & August 2 &
September 18 & October 23 & November 8
Curated by Jens Hoffmann
SPECTACULAR I:
April 26, 2003 6 PM
Pawel Althamer, John Bock, Surasi Kusolwong, Jonathan Monk, Tino Sehgal
SPECTACULAR II:
June 21, 2003
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset
Followed by a conversation between the artists and Jens Hoffmann
SPECTACULAR III:
August 2, 2003 9 PM
Open-Air Film Screening
Performance-Films and Videos, selected by John Baldessari and Joan Jonas:
Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Valie Export, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, Joan Jonas, Anna Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Yvonne Rainer and Richard Serra
SPECTACULAR IV :
September 18, 2003 6 PM
Trisha Donnelly, Annika Eriksson, Laura Lima, Kirsten Pieroth, Cai Guo-Qiang, Andreas Slominski, Patrick Tuttofuoco
SPECTACULAR V:
November 8, 2003
Carsten Höller
Followed by a conversation between the artist and Jens Hoffmann
Lectures:
June 17, 2003 6 PM
RoseLee Goldberg & The View from Here: A Century of Performance Art
October 23, 2003 6 PM
Dorothea von Hantelmann & Art after Performance
SPECTACULAR aspires to demonstrate that performance today in fact includes a wide range of artistic strategies from institutional critic, conceptual art, identity politics to object making or long-term social and political investigations. The investigation will focus especially on the conflict of supposedly eternal art works such as sculptures and paintings and the ephemeral nature of performances. The project¹s main objective is to investigate the relationship between performance and the art institution by stressing performance¹s immediate and spectacular character. While performance projects often function as adjunct programs of art institutions SPECTACULAR takes the ephemeral seriously and investigates, by means of an one year program, performance¹s relevance as a contemporary art form. Being divided into independent, yet interconnected parts, the project emphasizes the dynamics of time and advocates an artistic practice that privileges development and motion over inflexible dispositions. Besides the four performances evenings a film program showing historical performance work and a lecture program will be presented within the framework of this program to provide further information to the subject and to locate historical references. SPECTACULAR will make the museum become an active site, a place of investigation and process rather than a site for fixed arrangements. It aims to do so by examining the way artists use the language of performance as it was originally developed during the 1960s and 1970s in their work today and relates it to the art institution in a diverse range of possibilities. All performances of SPECTACULAR will try to respond directly to the particularities of the museum and specifically its role as a place for maintaining a cultural heritage as an archive of art works.
Jens Hoffmann
The foundation museum kunst palast is a Public-Private-Partnership of the City of Düsseldorf, E.ON AG, METRO Group and degussa AG.
The performance of Elmgreen & Dragset is supported by International Art Movers Knab.
