Exhibition
Framed. Activities for the Camera
29 Oct 2021 – 15 Jan 2022
Regular hours
- Friday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Tuesday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 11:00 – 18:00
Address
- Lindenstrasse 34-35
- Berlin
Berlin - 10969
- Germany
Persons Projects proudly presents the group exhibition Framed. Activities for the Camera, focusing on the correlation between performance and photography
About
Performance as an art form, beginning in the mid-20th century, has been used and developed by contemporary artists through their use of photography as their primary tool for recording their ideas and actions. Understandably, performance art needs photography to be able to last. Yet, photography plays an even more important role, not only as a means for the documentation but especially when the performance is staged solely for the camera. This exhibition presents a selection of artists who recorded their actions specifically for this reason.
Together, these selected works span more than 50 years and represent several geo-political regions. They range from Grey Crawford's early 70s experiments in Southern California through the activities of the duo KwieKulik and Józef Robakowski in communist Poland, to Finnish artist Hilla Kurki's cut clothes photographs taken recently. All of these pieces share a conceptual context in how they use repetition and sequencing as their primary form for expression.
Each of these artists experimented with the camera to test the physical and psychological limits of their bodies. Their performances were staged and carefully planned as photographs or videos without any other autonomous events surrounding them.
They are well aware of what Amelia Jones describes in her article "'Presence' in absentia" (1997) as performance's "dependence on documentation to attain symbolic status within the realm of culture".[1]
[1] Jones, Amelia: “'Presence' in absentia. Experiencing Performance as Documentation”, in: Art Journal, Vol. 56, Issue 4, p. 11-18, here p. 13, 1997.