Alexandra Bachzetsis: Notebook

Alexandra Bachzetsis (lives and works in Zurich) views the conceptual and physical form of the human body both as a medium and as a process or substance. In doing so, the artist draws on the vocabulary of “pop-cultural” and commercial media such as film or advertising, as well as moments from the history of art, theatre and choreography, which she simultaneously stages but also critically deconstructs.

At the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Bachzetsis presents her new work Notebook, which is shown as a performance and video installation. The project is a radical reexamination of her own biography as a dancer, choreographer and artist. The piece resulted from a dialogical method developed by Bachzetsis especially for this project. The collaboration with the project partners is evident in the diverse encounters that take the form of material and immaterial traces, voices and remnants. Themes such as lust, sexuality, excess, innocence, pain and transience are negotiated in the form of performative notes that manifest themselves in a plurality of voices, images, bodies and objects. The notebook as an indispensable companion to the artistic process, as a private archive of creative work and a medium for storing ideas for imagined future projects is a reflection of Bachzetsis` artistic affinity for the fragmentary and sketch-like in creative and performative thought processes.

The exhibition at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen presents Bachzetsis’s latest performance and at the same time embeds it in the artist`s multifaceted oeuvre, which takes shape in ephemeral moments and actions as well as documentary, written and multimedia forma. Through an idiosyncratic mixture of dance elements, performative strategies and self-recording practices, the body becomes a corporeal archive, the most subversive form of presentation of experience and the site of constant agency between past and present, occurrence and documentation, liveness and mediality.

At the opening weekend (March 31 and April 1, 2023) the performance Notebook celebrated its premiere. The performance Perfect was shown during the opening on Friday and at 2:30pm on Saturday. 

In the context of the exhibition, a survey catalog of Bachzetsi's work, published by Roma Publications and edited by Hendrik Folkerts and Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, will be released.

Alexandra Bachzetsis lives and works in Zurich. Solo shows/projects (selection): 2020: Obscene, exhibition version, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich (2022); 2020: Obscene, theatre version, Gessnerallee, Zurich (2021); Chasing a Ghost (2019–ongoing), Mudam, Luxembourg (2020); An Ideal for Living, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2018); Escape Act (2018), Pact Zollverein, Essen, Germany (2018); Private: Wear a mask when you talk to me (2016) and Private Song (2017), High Line New York, New York (2018); Massacre: Variations on a Theme, MoMA, New York (2017); From A to B via C, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013 & 2015); From A to B via C,Tate Modern, London (2014); Show, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2008). Group shows (selection): Hannah Villiger, Muzeum Susch, Susch (2023); Moving Bodies, Moving Images, Whitechapel Gallery, London, documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2016/17); The Biennial of Moving Images 2014, Geneva (2014); documenta 13, Kassel (2012); L’Escorte 5. Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2008), Centre d’art contemporain de Brétigny (CAC), Brétigny-sur-Orge (2011).

For further questions please contact Giovanni Carmine (carmine@k9000.ch) or Céline Matter (matter@k9000.ch).

The exhibition by Alexandra Bachzetsis is supported by Sophie und Karl Binding Stiftung (Sélection d’Artistes N°99) and Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is supported by: Stadt St.Gallen, Kulturförderung Kanton St.Gallen, Swisslos, Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung, Martel AG and Kulturförderung Appenzell Ausserrhoden.

The performance Notebook is enabled by: Stadt Zürich, Kanton Zürich, Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung and Ernst Göhner Stiftung.