Tanzquartier Wien

Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score – Vienna 2019 is an exhibition of performances created by artists from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe that are activated from works present in private collections in Vienna. The project is based on an original exhibition score conceived by Pierre Bal-Blanc and was launched for the first time at documenta 14 in Athens/Kassel in 2017 according to the artists that were featured in the exhibition. The Private Score is this score’s second version and is being produced in Vienna at the initiative of the Kontakt collection with its resources expanded by the collections of the TBA21 and works also represented in the collection of Generali Foundation.

For this iteration, the curator together with Romanian choreographer and artist Manuel Pelmuş investigates gestures once generated in 1960s and ’70s Eastern Europe in close dialogue with the artists. It will also include works in the abovementioned collections by figures active after 1989 who re-activated the emancipatory potential of the socialist Neo-Avantgarde. The gestures and movements inherent in the artworks are translated into a score and activated in an aleatory fashion, being continuously repeated by performers in everyday situations. The activation of the artworks will be resituated via the performers’ presence during opening hours in the Lidl food market on Wiedner Hauptstraße; the choice of this location relates to the former use of this space, which hosted the exhibition program of the Generali Foundation and its conversion into a new purpose.

The original artworks from the Austrian collections that form the starting point for these performative movements and gestures will be shown at Haus Wittgenstein, an icon of Austrian modernist architecture housing since 1975 the Bulgarian Cultural Institute. The subtle gestures of the performers at the Lidl food market reference the performative tactics seen in the works shown at Haus Wittgenstein. At Tanzquartier Wien, the project will be contextualized by a discourse-focused event entitled Parallax Views on 25 June.