Negotiations
“I’m fascinated by duration in performance and by the blur that time makes of the borders between art and life. What starts as art becomes something else.“ — Tim Etchells
Alexander Gottfarb sets up shop to present Negotiations. For a whole year, dancers take turns performing at this subsidiary of TQW every day during regular business hours, i.e. from 10.00 to 18.00 – let’s not forget that dancing is proper labour. The mammoth project is the third performance by the Swedish choreographer that examines the relationships between movement and systems of belief.
Negotiations takes the form of a public social ritual that analyses the practice of collaboration, dialogue and exchange. The movements oscillate between recognisable iconic gestures and abstract patterns. Negotiations invites the audience – as well as accidental passers-by – to stay in the “dance subsidiary” for as long as they like and to keep coming back. The duration of a year will present many opportunities to view this work under ever-changing parameters. After all, the performance on a dark Monday afternoon in winter offers a very different experience from that on a hot Sunday morning in the summer.
In October with Soraya Emery, Alexander Gottfarb, Nanina Kotlowski, Patric Redl and Charlotta Ruth.
graduated from the Stockholm Ballet Academy in 2003. The Swedish artist lives in Vienna, working as a dancer for choreographers Elio Gervasi, Iztok Kovač, Chris Haring/Liquid Loft, among others. He is a founding member of The Loose Collective. Alexander Gottfarb’s interest in examining politically (Political Movements, 2010) or religiously (Moved by Faith, 2011) motivated forms of movement was already evident in his early pieces.
The dancer and choreographer uses repetition and transformation, discipline and exhaustion in his work. In his 72-hour solo performance A Matter of Belief (2016) he started to explore the effects of faith and motivation on the execution of movements. In the process, he has gained a new understanding of his physical memory as a dancer. In Together (2017), he introduced another two dancers to the performance, thus turning it into a trio. Now, Negotiations adds a new order of magnitude to the two pieces.
Credits
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