13 listopada 2017
26 listopada kończy się 57. Międzynarodowa Wystawa Sztuki - La Biennale di Venezia - pod tytułem „VIVA ARTE VIVA”. W dniach od 23 do 26 listopada będzie można po raz ostatni obejrzeć „Fausta” autorstwa Anne Imhof, przygotowanego dla Pawilonu Niemieckiego, który otrzymał Złotego Lwa za najlepszy wkład krajowy.
W ramach „Dornbracht Conversations”, prowadzonych przez Hansa Ulricha Obrista, Anne Imhof i kurator Susanne Pfeffer po raz pierwszy rozmawiano na temat „Fausta” po prezentacji. Jako sponsor wkładu do Pawilonu Niemieckiego, Dornbracht zaprosił gości do Serpentine Sackler Gallery / The Magazine w Londynie. W załączeniu znajdą Państwo podsumowanie rozmowy, zdjęcia oraz oficjalny press kit Pawilonu Niemieckiego.
„Dornbracht Conversations” powstały w 2008 r. w ramach Culture Projects jako platforma do publicznego dyskursu między architekturą, designem i innymi dziedzinami sztukami. W ramach Dornbracht Culture Projects, Dornbracht wspiera wybrane wystawy i projekty od 1996 roku. Celem firmy jest rozwój własnej tożsamości kulturowej i stworzenie wartości dodanej, która wykracza poza czyste produkty.
Dornbracht Conversations 6: A conversation with Anne Imhof and Susanne Pfeffer, hosted by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Topic:
“Faust” by Anne Imhof. A presentation for the German Pavilion, curated by Susanne Pfeffer, awarded the 2017 Golden Lion at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Following on from Anne Imhof’s “Faust” at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Dornbracht – sponsoring the German Pavilion project for the third time – was hosting the sixth in the “Dornbracht Conversations” series on 23 May 2017. Devised and initiated in 2008 as part of the Dornbracht Culture Projects, this provides a platform for public discourse between the disciplines of architecture, design and art. Those who have previously participated in the discussion include Stefan Diez, Lauren Boyle and Solomon Chase (DIS), Konstantin Grcic, Charlotte Klonk, Mateo Kries, Mike Meiré, Tobias Rehberger, Dieter and Michael Sieger, Matteo Thun and Thomas Wagner.
In „The Magazine”, the café created by Zaha Hadid that is adjacent to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Anne Imhof and Susanne Pfeffer talked to the Serpentine Galleries’ artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist. It was the first time since the award of the Golden Lion for the best national participation that the artist Anne Imhof and the curator Susanne Pfeffer had spoken about “Faust”, the work of art which inspired the jury at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice: a piece that travels through space and time, comprising elements of sculpture, installation and performance art. In her scenarios, Anne Imhof envisions how the human body is constituted within material and discursive, technological, socio-economic and pharmaceutical demarcations.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is famous for his interviews and his first question always comes under the heading “to begin with the beginning”, as it concerns an artist’s first work. Anne Imhof described a boxing match she had initiated in a table-dance bar in the Frankfurt red light district. The boxers had to fight while the band was playing, whereas the band had to play as long as the boxers were fighting. Anne Imhof remembers bloody noses and no way out.
Anne Imhof has been working with those performing “Faust” in the German Pavilion for a long time, and when Obrist asked her about them, she was keen to stress the friendship she enjoyed with the individual performers, and how their individual personalities were involved in the creative process. Franziska Aigner, for instance, is a dancer from the William Forsythe Ensemble who provides extremely honest and analytical feedback. Or Billy Bultheel, a young composer who made it possible for Anne Imhof to access the dance scene, where she got to know Aigner, Frances Chiaverini and Josh Johnson.
“Everybody in ‘Faust’ is performing as themselves”, is how the artist described the fact that the performers are not cast as a character in a role. “Good looks were never a factor when it came to casting. This is what makes it so strong.” She regards the energy that each individual puts into their performance as a gift to her personally, but also to the onlookers. She also wrote songs together with Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner, just like in a band. As Anne Imhof says, it is important that the songs performed in “Faust” were also written by those who sing them.
When asked about her artistic influences Andy Warhol, Giotto di Bondone, Caravaggio, Genesis P-Orridge or Nadine Fraczkowski, the artist also explained how important Michelangelo was for her when she first started out. You discover certain things in certain phases. “My main media are drawing and painting”, says Imhof. “Like making notes. It is the immediacy. I am never without something to write with.” This enables the images and movements in Anne Imhof’s performances to emerge and develop alternately from drawings, rehearsals, photographs and paintings.
When Hans Ulrich Obrist asked Susanne Pfeffer how she came to pick Anne Imhof, the curator explained that she quickly became the obvious choice. Despite spending two months on research to give herself a complete overview of contemporary art. “It was the only choice I could make.” Anne Imhof reflects the changes happening in our bodies in a political and technological sense and stands for powerful realism in an age of major transformations.
Anne Imhof was extremely forthcoming and comprehensible in her explanations of the physical and resolute intrusions into the German Pavilion that do not mask a thing. She was immediately drawn to glass as a material because it has the capacity to creating different overlapping layers, to reflect and divide spaces both horizontally and vertically.
Obrist remarked about the conspicuous number of mobile phone chargers in the exhibition. Conveying instructions during the performance through text messages on mobile phones is a method Anne Imhof used with her ensemble for the first time in “Angst”, staged at Hamburg railway station in 2016. “It was something new, having the script on the mobile, instead of writing it on your skin, for example, or hiding it somewhere.” At the same time she can communicate with the performers during the performance through concepts they have developed together. “Now rap like a dolphin”, “Now it’s the mad king”, or simply “Hey, let’s go NOW” are typical of these instructions. But not all of them are read, said Anne Imhof, many of them disappear into the void. “I don’t think I realised just how significant the ‘gone-factor’ is.”
Obrist asked how she was coping with the seven-month run of the Biennale. “You don’t want the piece to be constantly available, to always be there. What does that mean over the seven months?” Anne Imhof provided a logical explanation for why a piece like this cannot be performed every day – it would change the quality of the interpretation. For example: “Initially the idea of a scream is very simple. But then it becomes complex, it could be anything. It could go on for a long time, or pass over to something else, it could be directed at someone’s face, or at their back. Everything means something else, and we are continuing to work on these things at the same time. You cannot produce these screams with the same intensity every day.”
So in the German Pavilion, there will be a daily routine with just a few performers, which is not the same
as the entire piece. “You cannot simply replace the performers with others in the troupe”, explained Susanne Pfeffer, stressing how important it was that “Faust” was not only shown to a vernissage audience at the start of the Biennale.
Hans Ulrich Obrist wanted to know her initial reaction to the imposing Pavilion. “I was affected by the sheer scale of the space”, explained Anne Imhof. When she was away from Venice, she always remembered it as being smaller. The most important question was how the visitors to the exhibition would experience the piece in this space. “If they think they are confident in what they see there, and take up a position very quickly, then this is a fragile construction. There is no complexity to hide behind, the transparency of the material makes everything highly visible.”
Susanne Pfeffer added: “The onlooker also becomes a part of this. Who is underneath, who is on top? Who is playing a role? Who is simply reacting? The floor and walls reflect, you have to keep changing your own position.”
Susanne Pfeffer explained that because of the complexity of the exhibition – which includes working
with dogs – she now has the feeling that she is not staging a one-man show, but a group exhibition.
Hans Ulrich Obrist wondered exactly what role the animals played.
“The animal I chose this time is the least animal-like I have ever worked with. And it is the only one that was even remotely possible”, explained Anne Imhof. Susanne Pfeffer added that dogs can represent how lovely or how brutal a system can be. She also highlighted the question of whether the Pavilion was a building or a territory.
Finally, Hans Ulrich Obrist remembered Christoph Schlingensief, whose posthumous award of the Golden Lion was the last to have been received by the German Pavilion. Schlingensief’s work had been inspired by Joseph Beuys and the concept of social sculpture – is this also true for Anne Imhof?
“The remarkable thing about him as far as I am concerned is that he spoke as a public figure and was really moving. He did not distinguish, he wanted something. He loved life, as well as all its squalor.”
Hans Ulrich Obrist took the love of life as the perfect closing remark.
The former Head of the Royal Academy in London, Norman Rosenthal, spoke from the floor to remind us of all the important German artists who had already created important images in the Pavilion. Anne Imhof said that she consciously took her cue from Sigmar Polke, who had painted the actual walls of the Pavilion. When asked by Rosenthal about the title of the work “Faust”, Anne Imhof said that she would be grateful if people were not too sure how to receive the work. “It is not good, especially in Germany, to be too sure about the position you have taken.”
Joanna Bartnik
JBcomm
tel. +48 22 409 429 8
e-mail: joanna.bartnik@jbcomm