LISTE Performance Project • June 17 – June 22, 2014 • Basel
Calla Henkel
Max Pitegoff
Tobias Spichtig
Paolo Thorsen-Nagel
Eleanor Bauer
Anne Imhof
Alexander
Baczy’n ski-Jenkins
Ligia Lewis
Lawrence
Abu Hamdan
Michael Dean
LISTE Performance Project
June 17 – June 22, 2014
Curated by Fabian Schöneich.
Texts by Fabian Schöneich
unless otherwise noted
Design by Ronnie Fueglister
Printing by Druckerei Dietrich,
Basel
Hosted by LISTE
Art Fair Basel
Burgweg 15
CH-4058 Basel
www.liste.ch
The Performance Project
is made possible by
the generous support of:
BALIMA
STIFTUNG
Supported by:
Alfred
�ichterich
Stiftung
The Performance Project at this
year’s LISTE places its focus on the
reception of performance itself.
As performance has been an independent art form since the 1960s,
the Performance Project at LISTE
seeks to provide a space for individual works. At specific locations
in Basel, artists are invited to develop works and create an environment that invites the audience to
reflect on and discuss the specific
work before them. To that end,
existing structures should be
broken open in order to develop
new tactics and to contribute to
the presentation and promotion of
performance as an independent
medium. The Performance Project
at LISTE considers itself to be an
important supporter of performance art.
This year’s Performance Project at
LISTE will bring together performance works focusing on language
and voices, sound and poetry,
choreography and dance. Reflecting its own development as an
art form, the genre of performance
is still an experimental field and
is deeply dependent on its performers. Apart from the content of
individual works, this year’s Performance Project is also concerned
with the various stages of Performance: Solo performances will be
shown alongside works that are
structured around several protag­
onists, performances in the public
space and in privates spaces, stage
versions, as well as works that are
more intimately focused on the
level of the observer. New works
will be presented as well as existing works that will be shown
for the first time in Switzerland.
As an online component to the
performance project, Audio
Visual Arts has contributed two
exclusive tracks by British artist
and musician Graham Lambkin.
Orchestra
with Calla Henkel,
Max Pitegoff,
Tobias Spichtig
and Paolo
Thorsen-Nagel
2014
*1988, US — lives and works in Berlin
*1987, US — lives and works in Berlin
*1982, CH — lives and works in Zurich
*1985, DE / US — lives and works in Basel
Monday
June 16, 2014
8 p m
LISTE Terrace
Admission: free
M O N DAY
Photo by Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, 2014
Calla Henkel, Max Pitegoff, Tobias
Spichtig and Paolo Thorsen-Nagel
present their second concert
as an orchestra. The quartet uses
noise, pop and distraction on
top of text. For LISTE, they will
perform the soundtrack of their
first performance, which took
place at New Theater in Berlin this
late spring.
Thorsen-Nagel and Spichtig have
been working together as a
band for the past year. Upon
invitation from New Theater, the
theater run by Henkel and Pitegoff
in Berlin, it was decided that
their collaboration would take
form as an orchestra.
— The artists
MON DAY
Eleanor Bauer
Midday and
Eternity
[the time piece]
*1983, US — lives and works in Brussels
2014
Tuesday
June 17, 2014
8 p m
Kaserne Basel,
Reithalle
Admission: limited number of free tickets for LISTE guest
card holders, otherwise CHF 25.—
Photos by ByIan Douglas, 2014
T U E S DAY
TUE S DAY
With Midday and Eternity (the time
piece) Eleanor Bauer, an American
choreographer and dancer based
in Brussels, creates the closing
piece of the past-present-future
trilogy that started with A Dance
for the Newest Age (the triangle
piece) and continued with Tentative Assembly (the tent piece). In
Midday and Eternity Eleanor Bauer
deals with the most unknown of
the three tenses: the future.
Commonly in the artistic practice
of a choreographer, the future
is always present, as one works
progressively towards a given
moment when a «piece» will be
«finished» and presented to the
public. What appears onstage
is often a portrait of several past
tenses, choices made in anticipation of creating a future moment
which then becomes a present
composed of pasts. With Midday
and Eternity, Bauer asks how to
create a present out of futures,
altering the relationship to time in
process and product and manipulating the relationships between
known things in order to remain at
the edge of one’s knowledge.
Reinventing the future by repositioning the past and opening up
potentials in the present, (the time
piece) approaches the unknowable
by making knowns and unknowns
move together.
Somewhere between science
fiction and Good Old-Fashioned
Choreography, Midday and
Eternity (the time piece) is as much
about novelty, fantasy and impossibility as it is about the tried and
true, reliable and recurring. In a
trilogy that deals with dancing as
an act of synthesis and coordination of many facets of experience
and ways of knowing, with Midday
and Eternity, the passage between
the finite and infinite is constantly
at play, connecting instants and
details to the big picture, searching for the vast expanses of space
and time that open up within the
minutiae of thought and movement.
Direction: Eleanor Bauer
Creation, performance: Eleanor Bauer,
Rebecka Stillman, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche,
Naiara Mendioroz Music: Chris Peck
Costumes: Ada Rajszys
Scenography: 88888
Lighting: Bardia Mohammad
Executive production: Caravan
Production for GoodMove (Brussels)
Coproduction: Kaaitheater (Brussels),
BUDA (Kortrijk) in collaboration with
Festival Latitudes Contemporaines (Lille),
Vooruit (Ghent)
Residencies: SIN Culture Center
(Budapest), PACT Zollverein (Essen)
With the support of: The Flemish
Authorities, The Flemish Community
Commission of the Brussels-Capital
Region (VGC)
Anne Imhof
RGE II
*1978, DE — lives and works in Paris and Frankfurt
2014
Wednesday
June 18, 2014
4 p m
Volkshaus,
Galerie Saal,
Rebgasse 12–14
Admission: free
Eleanor Bauer is artist in residence
at Kaaitheater (Brussels)
Special thanks: Nathan John,
The Wild Unknown
T U E S DAY
W E DN E S DAY
Anne Imhof’s RGE II deals with the
relation between dominance and
submission, slowness and passivity through structural motives
in space. A room, b/w lighting,
de-saturated, smoke that makes
the air visible, breathing, opium.
During the performance, the room
unfolds around compositional
axes, increasing steadily, fast and
slanting, developing in between
the bodies of performers and the
audience.
A picture in time emerges, the
relation of performer to performer transfers to the relation
between performer and viewer.
Language constitutes a horizon.
Composed of different modes,
it corresponds patterns of rep­
etition and overlay that relate to
the invisible, linguistic core of
the piece. Inner perceptive expression remains on a level of potency.
It enfolds a net between the one
who speaks and the one language
is addressed to. It remains am­
biguous till the end and is anticipated as such.
— Lea Welsch
Text: Leda Bourgogne, Anne Imhof
Performer: Anne Imhof, Olga Pedan,
Billy Bultheel, Eva Kruijssen, Lea Welsch,
Ian Edmonds With the support of:
Deborah Schamoni, Munich
The blue squares nourish me
the other ones punish me.
O hole
H Horizontal
Q enough
Lower the horizons all the horizons.
O hole
H Horizontal
Q enough
— Choirs Rage
Anne Imhof, Rage I. Courtesy the artist and Deborah Schamoni, Munich, 2014
W E D N E S DAY
W E DN E S DAY
Hologram on tour (excerpt)
I arrive by train. Awake in the terminus, all the passengers disembark together. I watch them walk
on both sides of the track, two
flows made up of lines. The lines
continue through the escalator,
into the central hall. The space is
tight. People walk really close
together, almost touching one
another. But this never happens.
5 minutes later the place is empty.
Their music forms hooks, which
fasten to my limbs and draw
me into every dark brick corner
of the gallery. What’s left is my
consciousness, which is pulled by
empathy into the twisted lyricism
of her words. I’m a character
in the staggered narrative of the
unfolding song.
Down a darkened alley, the slow
motion epilogue to a prolonged
Look at me and walk. If you drop
fistfight between two haggard
the metal bar, don’t look at it.
nationalists, muffled murmur of
I’ll kneel and grab it for you. Then
knuckles sinking into flesh. A
continue to walk on this invisible
girl pukes in the entrance to
line. If you see someone else from McDonalds while the automatic
the group look at you, go to him
sliding door, stuck on a crushed
and touch his hand. But don’t look empty Happy Meal, endlessly
at his hand. Always look at each
repeats its opening-closing action.
other. In the eye. Don’t look at the Three pre-pubescent boys sit on
audience, unless it’s someone
a bench, sharing an oversized can
you recognize. If I didn’t know you, of polskie pivo. I walk faster so
I wouldn’t even know what to do.
as not to miss the train, but my
surroundings seem to be slowing
Breathe. You share the same air.
down. I pass the darkened windowpane. I glance into the cracked
hier soir j’ai été voir ma soeur en
glass and see nothing in it but
concert avec son orchestre j’étais
the reflected glare of orange streetseule dans la salle. Seule avec
lamps. An inebriated howl closes
ma soeur. Seule avec le choeur.
in on me from behind. My ten­
The choir piece:
dency to «not-engage» is trampled
Ich laufe mit einem unsichtbaren
by the realization that I am a
Tiger die 5th Avenue hoch, plötzpart of it and always will be from
lich sehen ihn auch die Menschen now on.
um uns, alle zusammen beginnen
sie zu schreien. Il faudrait des
— Jeanne Graff /
voix, des voix qui se superposent
Stefan Tcherepnin
les unes aux autres. Et un Âne,
Anne. Transmission de pensée.
W ED N E S DAY
Alexander
Baczy’n ski-Jenkins
Dedication
Schwester
Schwester
*1987, PL / GB — lives and works in London
2014
Thursday
June 19, 2014
3 p m
Theodorskirchplatz
next to Wettsteinplatz
Admission: free
THUR S DAY
Dedication Schwester Schwester
–and Frank?
–I’ve never been to San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne,
I don’t know how to pronounce the names
–she’s a basic bitch
–but having a coke with you is definitely even more fun than
going to all those places
–having a coke with you is even more fun than …
–being sick to my stomach on meth in east block
–partly because
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you
partly because of your love for yoghurt
–partly because of southern hospitality
–partly because of your infectious smile
–partly because of the scar under your eye
and your face
–the physical fact of your face, inches from mine
–Mark Doty
–and your face
the physical fact of your face, inches from mine
–even in my dream I was shocked out of the narrative
even in my sleep I was shocked out of the narrative
–I like that, the physical fact of your face the physical fact of your face
«The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages»
— Frank O’Hara
’
Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins,
Dedication Schwester Schwester, Rehearsal, 2014
T H U R S DAY
’
Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins
makes choreographies. With a
background in dance and performance, he appropriates and
mutates everyday practices of
desire, like cruising in a cinema or
rollerblading. His work is inclined
toward a sense of queer fantasy.
Concept: Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins
’
in collaboration with and performed
by: Imma Mess, Karl Fagerlund
sound produced in collaboration with:
Lendl Barcelos, Samuel Hatchwell
THUR S DAY
Ligia Lewis
Sensation I
*1983, DO — lives and works in Berlin
2014
Friday
June 20, 2014
6 p m
Volkshaus,
Galerie Saal,
Rebgasse 12–14
Born in the Dominican Republic
and raised in the US, Ligia
Lewis lives and works in Berlin.
Lewis draws upon theatre, dance
and text constructing choreographic works that engage pop
culture, affect and empathy.
To this end she crafts nuanced
embodiments giving form to
enigmatic performances.
Sensation I is a choreography built
for a mouth rendered mute. An
act of singing is then abstracted
and set in motion. Lewis invites
another body into the raptures of
affect and embodiment using the
iconic pop diva as a point of
departure. Through duration and
sustained climax, Sensation I
potentiates the richness and
expressivity of a body morphing
through myriad images and
references. The audience experiences the efforts and pleasures
of a body amplified in silence.
Concept: Ligia Lewis
Performer: Martin Hansen
Music: Whitney Houston,
I will always love you
(live performance at Divas Live, 1999)
Admission: free
Singer Whitney Houston performs onstage at the 2009 American Music Awards
at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on November 22, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.
F R IDAY
F R I DAY
Lawrence
Abu Hamdan
*1985, JO — lives and works in London
Contra-Diction:
Speech
against itself
2014
Saturday
June 21, 2014
3 p m
Novartis Campus,
Auditorium
UG Visitor Center
Entrance via main gate on Voltstrasse / Fabrikstrasse,
ID or passport mandatory for entry,
Admission: free, seats limited to 100
S AT U R DAY
S ATUR DAY
Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work is
one that deals with sound but
probes explicitly into listening. It
invariably concerns the relationship between listening, politics
and the voice of the law. Abu
Hamdan, who was born in Jordan
and is currently completing his
Ph.D. at Goldsmiths College in
London, first explored the inter­
section of sound/music and
politics as a musician in a DIY
punk band. He went on to develop
an investigative artistic practice
that breaks down and thematizes
the com­plexity of listening almost
in the manner of a documentary.
Discourses on national identities,
human rights and law-making
regularly play a role in the artist’s
work, which embraces complex
audio-visual installations as
well as graphic design, sculpture
and photography.
His interrogation of the phenomenon of language, enacted in
highly diverse ways, also translates into workshops and performances. As part of this year’s
Per­formance Project, Lawrence
Abu Hamdan is presenting
his most recent work, a lectureperformance given for the first
time this spring at the contem­
porary arts festival Meeting Points
7 in Beirut.
Contra-Diction: Speech against
itself (2014) is about speaking
the truth and about the subtle
changes in the voice, its cadence
and stresses that accompany
the speaking of a lie. Abu Hamdan
looks specifically at lie detectors
and at the speech acts of the
Druze, a religious minority whose
communities are spread across
large parts of the Middle East and
who cannot be assigned to any
one nation such as Lebanon, Syria,
Israel / Palestine, and Jordan.
Abu Hamdan thereby explores the
concept of taqqiya, the «permission» to conceal one’s religion in
dangerous situations. On the basis
of taqqiya the Druze, too, keep
their faith a secret. The artist
speaks about stories coming out
of northern Syria, where in December 2013 a sheikh is said to have
forced a number of Druze villages
to convert to Islam. The lectureperformance by Lawrence Abu
Hamdan shows how language
defines faith and how taqqiya,
being simultaneously submissive
and subversive, challenges us
to rethink a mode of political listening in the context of speech acts
that misfire.
S AT U R DAY
Michael Dean
User
*1977, GB — lives and works in London
2014
Sunday
June 22, 2014
3 p m
Garden of
Alemannengasse 44
Admission: free
S UN DAY
«How inanimate that alphabet.
With the policy of its use in
its face. A demonstration of the
letter for you. You user with
your policies.»
Michael Dean
(Newcastle upon Tyne)
Texts in the shape of two fat
diminishing paperbacks were also
a feature of Dean’s exhibition
Government, held in 2012 at the
Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
Visitors were invited to tear out and
take away pages from these books.
Each page thereby became a
work to be worked on being read.
Alongside his work in sculpture, a Institute staff periodically read
core element of Michael Dean’s
aloud the artist’s working notes
production is his work in text. Each that led to the books. The text thus
of the British artist’s sculptures
filled the space acoustically and
evolve from intimate and observa- materialized as a work on a par
tional texts that accompany and
with the sculptural reiteration of
typographically envelop the
the walls. For Dean, the spoken
sculpture and regularly assume a
word placed in space has just as
live dimension. Thick books of
much expressive power and
writings are found among the
physical presence as his sculpture.
sculptures in his exhibitions, their
texts partly representing the
For LISTE’s Performance Project,
starting point of his work and
Dean has developed a new text
partly inviting interrogation of the work that is being shown for the
sculpture within something of
first time in the intimate setting of
a vocabularic, suggestive mecha- what was formerly a sculptor’s
nism or framework.
studio in Basel.
Courtesy the artist, Herald St, London,
Supportico Lopez, Berlin and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
S U N DAY
S UN DAY
Graham
Lambkin
Track 1: Dumb Answer to Miracles
(15’15”) 2010
Track 2: Loops for a Great Vacation
(10’40”) 2009
In conjunction with LISTE Performance Project, Audio Visual Arts
has contributed two exclusive
tracks by British musician Graham
Lambkin. A few words from Audio
Visual Arts:
Graham Lambkin, Hangover Be Gone, Pen on paper, 2010
S O U N DT R AC K
You’re at an art fair right now. Or
you were there. It’s a good one,
LISTE. Those scenes are intense.
I’ve been there as a visitor and
as a dealer. Kind of awesome, kind
of not awesome at times. I always
envy people I see walking through
the fair with headphones on,
zoned-out and just tripping on the
work. I wish I could do that but
it’s tough when you have friends
and cohorts that are participating
in the fair. A billion 2 second
conversations surface along the
way; just part of the deal. But
it is quite nice to roam a fair or a
museum while listening to music.
Audio Visual Arts has a focus
on sound related work. At least
it’s what’s always on the mind.
The most recent show at Audio
Visual Arts featured drawings by
artist Graham Lambkin. Graham is
often recognized more for his
music, principally as a member of
the crucial band «The Shadow
Ring». I recommend lending them
an ear. He’s also a great writer,
performer and draftsman, whose
drawings are equally as complex,
uncompromising, raw and fantastical as his music. There are two
tracks, among many he created,
that I think would be excellent
headphone jams for LISTE. One
was created to accompany a book
of his drawings called Dripping
Junk (2010) and the other can be
found in a book of his writings
called Dumb Answer to Miracles
(2009). Unfortunately these books
are no longer available but his
music and his drawings are. You
might consider acquiring some
of his work. If interested, contact
[email protected] and
we’ll make the connection.
Thanks for listening
and enjoy the mosey.
— Justin Luke
Listen here:
http://audiovisualarts.org/Liste19_
AVA_GrahamLambkin.mp3
S OUN DTRACK
N
Novartis Campus
Fa b
Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, was created
in 1996 through the merger of
Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz. Novartis
Campus, where the company has
its Basel headquarters, is a place of
innovation, knowledge and encounter. It comprises buildings by
architects including Frank Gehry,
SANAA and Peter Märkli and
incorporates works by artists such
as Jenny Holzer and Dan Graham.
The Visitor Center is housed in
the Märkli building, completed in
2006. The interior of the large
auditorium was designed by Vitra.
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LO CAT IO N S
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anne
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LISTE
Warteck PP
(meaning Permanent
Provisory), centre of LISTE.
Warteck Brewery was founded in
1856 and moved to this location
in 1872. Beer was produced
here until 1989, when the brewery
arm of the company was sold to
Feldschlösschen in Rheinfelden,
where Warteck beer is still made
today. The former brewery is now
a cultural centre hosting restaurants, clubs, exhibitions, concerts
and studios for artists and craftsmen throughout the year.
A
L
A
G re n za
.
c h e rs tr
The garden of a little
house on Allemannengasse. This
home of a sculptor who studied
in Paris but returned to Basel, is a
beautiful and mysterious location at the centre of town. Filled
with stone sculptures in front of a
semi-circular glass pavilion, this
public garden is also quite private.
T
K
Kaserne
Basel
V
Volkshaus
Basel
Formerly a Swiss military barracks constructed in 1863
by architect Johann Jakob Stehlin,
today Kaserne Basel is the largest
centre in north-west Switzerland
for the free contem­porary theatre,
dance and performance scene
and for innovative popular music.
Established in 1980 and exten­
sively renovated in 2002, Kaserne
Basel has hosted acclaimed
national and international artists,
choreographers, dancers and
directors, including Samuel
Beckett, Boris Charmatz and The
Forsythe Company.
Garden of
Alemannengasse 44
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Fischerweg
Münsterplatz
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Dreirosenbrücke
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Voltaplatz
Novartis Campus
Basel
Theodors­kirchplatz
(near Wettsteinplatz)
The Galerie Saal in
Basel’s recently renovated Volks­
haus originally housed the
library. Built in 1925, the Volks­
haus is a kind of community
centre that brings together different generations for various
celebrations and social events.
The Galerie Saal has its own
terrace looking out onto the
courtyard shaded by trees.
A popular hang-out for
the youth of Basel and a skateboarding spot, Theodorskirchplatz
square located between Basel
orphanage and the 11th-century
St Theodor’s church.
LOCATI ONS
LISTE
Performance Project
Monday Thursday
June 16, 2014
8 pm, LISTE Terrace
June 19, 2014
3 pm, Theodorskirchplatz
Orchestra with Calla Henkel,
Max Pitegoff, Tobias Spichtig
and Paolo Thorsen-Nagel
’
Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins
Dedication Schwester Schwester
Tuesday
June 17, 2014
8 pm, Kaserne Basel
Eleanor Bauer
Midday and Eternity
[the time piece]
Wednesday
June 18, 2014
4 pm, Volkshaus Basel
Anne Imhof
RGE II
Friday
June 20, 2014
6 pm, Volkshaus Basel
Ligia Lewis
Sensation I
Saturday
June 21, 2014
3 pm, Novartis Campus
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Contra-Diction:
Speech against itself
Sunday
June 22, 2014
3 pm, Alemannengasse 44
Michael Dean
User