Borderlines
In Borderlines, Manuel Pelmuș revisits past performances and personal histories and aggregates notions of visibility and invisibility in connection to history and politics of representation. These histories playfully move back and forth in time and space, updating and reflecting on the notion of boundaries, whether they are boundaries between states or boundaries between artistic disciplines. The artist uses his own memories of the volatility of borders, also in regard to the fall of the Berlin wall.
Pelmuș’s lecture, which will be performed in absolute darkness, addresses the ascendency of visual perception and reflects on the dominant economy of presence. In doing so, he will refer to his solo Preview, which was also performed in absolute darkness.
is a Romanian artist with a background in choreography who works across different contexts, such as exhibitions, theatres and public space. He often deploys a continuous live presence and live-action interventions within the context of exhibitions, using enactment as a performative strategy. He investigates the human body as a medium and the context of specific places and institutions in order to challenge existing hierarchies and explore the body’s relationship to collective memory and the construction of history. In 2013, he represented Romania at the 55th Venice Biennale in form of a collaborative project together with Alexandra Pirici. His works have been shown in museums and biennials worldwide, notably the Kyiv Biennale, Tate Modern (London), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Para Site Hong Kong, OFF-Biennale Budapest, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Ludwig Museum (Cologne), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), SALT (Istanbul), BOZAR (Brussels), Gothenburg Biennale etc. In 2019, Pelmus and Pierre Bal-Blanc curated the exhibition Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score – Vienna 2019, which was coproduced by Kontakt Sammlung and TQW. His ongoing live action interventions are part of private and public collections. In 2012, Pelmuş was awarded the Berlin Art Prize for performing arts, two years later he received the prize for excellence from the National Dance Centre Bucharest. Manuel Pelmuş is currently a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo (KHIO). He lives and works in Oslo and Bucharest.
The lecture will be held in English.