nowhere / now here

At the same time as the fledgling genre of performance art shattered Western ideas of the static art object in the early 1960s, video technology made a new method of recording art possible. nowhere / now here is dedicated to this contradiction between live art as an ephemeral, transient, unique event and its technological (re)production. Contrary to their original form, live performances become an image-based art form in the historiography of the corresponding documentary material and, as such, find their way into museum collections like that of mumok.

The title nowhere / now here refers to the festival’s dual structure, which interweaves the live program with the historical film footage. What is created in one instance disappears in the next, only to reappear in a different medium elsewhere. At the heart of this historical exploration are film documentaries about performances from the 1960s and 1970s that are part of the mumok collection—works that tackled various social taboos, body images, and oppressive conventions and consequently influenced contemporary art in a major way.

Artists in the exhibition: 
Chris Burden, Günter Brus, VALIE EXPORT, Terry Fox, Ulysses Jenkins, Joan Jonas, Kurt Kren, Hermann Nitsch, Nam June Paik, Ernst Schmidt jr., Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke

The invited performance artists from the fields of choreography and dance have always, each in their own way, pushed the boundaries of stage dance as an artform and investigated presence and performativity in the context of the museum and the white cube. Thematically and in their strategies and artistic practices, they continue the heritage of 1960s and 1970s performance art—also by differentiating themselves from it.

The architecture of nowhere / now here. A Performance Festival changes through the different setups of the live program. Traces of the performances remain within the space.

Performances as part of ImPulsTanz:
Trajal Harrell, Nikima Jagudajev, Geumhyung Jeong, Ian Kaler, Dana Michel, Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira, Eszter Salamon, Deva Schubert

nowhere / now here. A Performance Festival is curated by Marianne Dobner, the live program by Christine Standfest (ImPulsTanz).
The performance festival culminates in Nikima Jagudajev’s performative exhibition Basically.