Unbound: Performance as Rupture

This exhibition at the Julia Stoschek Foundation traces the intersections of performance and video art since the 1960s and up to the present, paying particular attention to forms of rupture, break and pause.

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  – Akeem Smith, Social Cohesiveness, 2020

• – P. Staff, Pure Means, 2021

• – Pipilotti Rist, (Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler, 1988

The group exhibition "Unbound: Performance as Rupture" is dedicated to the question of how artists at different times have dealt with the body in relation to the camera, rejecting ideologies of oppression, breaking through historical narratives or shaking up notions of identity.

In contrast to Peggy Phelan’s definition of performance as a live art characterized by its immediate disappearance, "Unbound" centers the use of the camera and its apparatus to record and direct the performance itself. By willfully conflating the presence of performance and the virtuality of the image, the artists question a fundamental paradox—or representational gap—between the performing subject, whose complex identity can never be depicted fully, and the camera as a violent tool that tries to capture, contain, and classify them. Many of these works expose and negate the colonial gaze perpetuated by the camera, while simultaneously utilizing time-based technologies, in order to create otherwise impossible connections across spaces and temporalities. In addition to performance documentation and performance-for-the-camera, the exhibited artworks offer investigations into contemporary image economies that draw attention to how bodies move through or evade physical and digital spaces.

Participating artists: Panteha Abareshi, Eleanor Antin, Salim Bayri, Nao Bustamante, Matt Calderwood, Peter Campus, Patty Chang, Julien Creuzet, Vaginal Davis, Ufuoma Essi, Valie Export, Cao Guimarães, Shuruq Harb, Sanja Iveković, Ulysses Jenkins, Joan Jonas, Stanya Kahn, Verena Kyselka, Tarek Lakhrissi, Klara Lidén, mandla, Graham Clayton-Chance, Lutz Mommartz, Senga Nengudi, Mame-Diarra Niang, Lydia Ourahmane, Christelle Oyiri, P. Staff, Manfred Pernice, Sondra Perry, Howardena Pindell, Pope.L, Pipilotti Rist, Katharina Sieverding, Akeem Smith and Gwenn Thomas.

Runtime: Thu, 14/09/2023 to Sun, 28/07/2024

Takes place here:

• Julia Stoschek Foundation