For this special exhibition, BUREAU A created a new typology of exhibition space, situated exactly in between the white cube of the art gallery and the black box of the music or dance theatre. The grey space offers a neutral stage to welcome the multiple art performance.
Performance/Process offers a subjective approach to performance art in Switzerland from 1960 to 2015 via the works of forty-six artists, companies and groups. Performance was precisely the “format” capable of braking through any kind of labelling that could define art forms into a specific genre. Theatre, visual arts, dance, music, sculpture could mix or rather gather forces.
Description of the project by Bureau A
The eternal and somehow boring debate about the belonging of architecture to art seems to be a dead end. It inevitably enhances the existence of disciplinary walls allowing for little porosity. What if we stopped talking about the presupposed difference between the two? The terms of the discussion would need to be renewed to focus on support, craft, and not on creativity and freedom, less even on functionality.
When Oskar Schlemmer organised his architectural performance for the Triadisches Ballet in 1922 those questions where very much out of his preoccupations. The quest to make a great and complete work of art (gesamkunstwerk) was his main goal and the fact of labelling his oeuvre as art, painting, architecture, ballet, scenography or dance was of no interest for him.
Echoing this moving moment of art, Performance/Process has been the opportunity to readdress that relationship in a dynamic way. The event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris created a sort of grey ballet for the culture of performance. The CCSP has gathered all the arts under the open umbrella of performance to present the incredible work it has produced during three past decades. Performance was precisely the “format” capable of braking through any kind of labelling that could define art forms into a specific genre. Theatre, visual arts, dance, music, sculpture could mix or rather gather forces. Architecture was here to embrace the very same un-definition and to imagine the flexible support for 12 weeks of a great diversity of art forms and events.
The scenography designed by BUREAU A for the show defines a new typology of exhibition space, situated exactly in between the white cube of the art gallery and the black box of the music or dance theatre. The grey space offers a neutral stage to welcome the multiple art of performance. Modular plastic boxes, used in the workshops of many craftsmen, are the only furniture of this space. Alternatively, soccle, video support, wall or simply storage, they can be moved and piled at any moment of the performance process. To provide the largest possible floor surface, the atrium of the exhibition space is filled with a new deck and all partitions are taken down. The space dissolves into a grey blur, its frontiers disappear.
Like the Triadisches Ballet, the intervention raises some questions about the boundaries between disciplines. Would it be impossible to consider the participation of one art into another without the necessity of distinguishing them with a clear partition? Do we necessarily have to understand the catalogue of objects into play in order to name each one of them? Isn’t this labelling attitude existing only to understand the commercial value of each object and the possibilities to actually purchase them?
Oskar Schlemmer was part of a historical moment where radical change was one of the main objectives of the arts agenda. We might not be at the same period in time but we could affirm that the necessity of change is still very present and even quite urgent. It seems relevant to imagine a creative space where the labelling of “purchasable” pieces is less needed, an exhibition where the history of the institution - the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris- can gather the necessary energy to present the works as a whole, dissolving the definition of past and present.
Description of the project by CCSP
The eternal and somehow boring debate about the belonging of architecture to art seems to be a dead end. It inevitably enhances the existence of disciplinary walls allowing for little porosity. What if we stopped talking about the presupposed difference between the two? The terms of the discussion would need to be renewed to focus on support, craft, and not on creativity and freedom, less even on functionality.
When Oskar Schlemmer organised his architectural performance for the Triadisches Ballet in 1922 those questions where very much out of his preoccupations. The quest to make a great and complete work of art (gesamkunstwerk) was his main goal and the fact of labelling his oeuvre as art, painting, architecture, ballet, scenography or dance was of no interest for him.
Echoing this moving moment of art, Performance/Process has been the opportunity to readdress that relationship in a dynamic way. The event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris created a sort of grey ballet for the culture of performance. The CCSP has gathered all the arts under the open umbrella of performance to present the incredible work it has produced during three past decades. Performance was precisely the “format” capable of braking through any kind of labelling that could define art forms into a specific genre. Theatre, visual arts, dance, music, sculpture could mix or rather gather forces. Architecture was here to embrace the very same un-definition and to imagine the flexible support for 12 weeks of a great diversity of art forms and events.
The scenography designed by BUREAU A for the show defines a new typology of exhibition space, situated exactly in between the white cube of the art gallery and the black box of the music or dance theatre. The grey space offers a neutral stage to welcome the multiple art of performance. Modular plastic boxes, used in the workshops of many craftsmen, are the only furniture of this space. Alternatively, soccle, video support, wall or simply storage, they can be moved and piled at any moment of the performance process. To provide the largest possible floor surface, the atrium of the exhibition space is filled with a new deck and all partitions are taken down. The space dissolves into a grey blur, its frontiers disappear.
Like the Triadisches Ballet, the intervention raises some questions about the boundaries between disciplines. Would it be impossible to consider the participation of one art into another without the necessity of distinguishing them with a clear partition? Do we necessarily have to understand the catalogue of objects into play in order to name each one of them? Isn’t this labelling attitude existing only to understand the commercial value of each object and the possibilities to actually purchase them?
Oskar Schlemmer was part of a historical moment where radical change was one of the main objectives of the arts agenda. We might not be at the same period in time but we could affirm that the necessity of change is still very present and even quite urgent. It seems relevant to imagine a creative space where the labelling of “purchasable” pieces is less needed, an exhibition where the history of the institution - the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris- can gather the necessary energy to present the works as a whole, dissolving the definition of past and present.
Text by Jean-Paul Felley & Olivier Kaeser
