Performative situations in public space: The research and action group

The module will commence with the formation of a group out of several individuals. We will discuss and research together which groups act in public space and we will train to become one, or more. We will become a group of people moving together, building common performance structures, self-design of shared behavior, as moments and building blocks of a public choreography that can serve to manifest, attack, defend, protest, relate to other people, create conflict and pleasure, violence and beauty, reality and fiction.

Using video, photos and other documents, and, most importantly, the participants’ own experience and physical knowledge, we will work in the studio and move on to outdoor public spaces, creating formations of power, resistance, friendship, solidarity. We will walk in town and study it together: reading and analyzing public choreography, the performance of the state, modes of civic behavior, performances of power, order and danger.

We will choose a public site to relate to, or invent one, and develop a public ceremony, a performative situation to activate and celebrate it, following research of commemorative actions and new rituals for sites of past and present conflict, in relation to architecture, politics, public sculpture, urban space, and involving questions of pilgrimage, assembly, collective progression, spatial tensions, the performance of mythos and ethos.


SCHEDULE

November 16th
morning
Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions
afternoon
Group Trip in Biella
Getting to know each other; public and group biographies of participants, including histories of conflict and collective action. Found dance and theatre, imagery and sound on the street. Using public sculpture and furniture, inahabiting symbolic sites and common spaces.

November 17th
morning
Participants present videos of readymade moments of public performance: state and opposition, critical and affirmative, announced and unannounced, singular and collective. Discussion and analysis
afternoon
Group walk in the area and town, locating, documenting and analysing public choreography and ready-made performance. ritual and pilgrimage.
evening
Screenings: public actions and ceremonies

November 18th
morning
How do we move together? Writing collective movement in the studio and public space. Notations, group communication, code, language. Accident and emergency cases.
afternoon
Walking the scores

November 19th
morning
Politics today. Where do we stand, What do we move for, Where do we move, What do we commemorate. Do we assemble for joy or mourning, consensus or conflict, belonging or standing out. Clear demands vs. positions of ambivalence.
Afternoon
Writing a choreographic score for the group, a route in town. How do we move and where to. Maps, locations, writing of collective movement, action procedures and protocol of behavior.
evening
Fake Party

November 20th
morning
rehearsal and preparations for final action
afternoon
Final action in town
evening
Party

BIOGRAPHY AND STATEMENT

Omer Krieger is an artist and curator who composes performative actions, political situations, forms of assembly and civic choreographies in public spaces. Krieger studies the public experience and the performance of the state, and is interested in the relations between art, citizenship, politics and action. Co-founder of the performative research body Public Movement, Krieger has served for the last four years as artistic director of Under the Mountain: New Public Art Festival in Jerusalem.

download the full documentation about the module and the mentor in PDF format