members of the Kunstverein München’s Summer School 2022: The Stories We Tell Ourselves, Architecture Group performed walking, running, and jumping through the exhibition space around the artworks in any way they wished to move. they were thoughtfully and carefully recorded by myself to create the performative scores. the idea of a performative score is that the documentation itself is a placeholder to gesture towards inclusivity. the ‘performative’ renders it almost an invisible act, supposedly without meaning, and here, therefore, evokes a reconceptualized version of one’s own liberty. also, we recorded the movements, but the reality is that each performance will always have different movements by the performers every time they walk through the space. moving through the exhibition is not prescribed, nor does it have to be by invitation as the imagined space is open to all. scores are often loosely defined because the nature of performance is that it occurs in each moment or context of difference from the past or future.
the pseudo-didactic gesture speaks to the performativity of being invited into a space, either formally, or informally by oneself, and the feeling of being expected to act or perform in a specific way. more broadly, it also speaks to surveillance and the notion of movements being recorded or watched closely while in particular places. it hopes to problematize our understanding of visibility in art spaces and open discussion. here, the record is not made from an overbearing eye or security camera, but is made among friends, and the tradition of space-guarding is challenged for a more inclusive and playful model.
informative research:
Sara Ahmed’s A Phenomenology of Whiteness
Brian O’Doherty’s Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space
