“Rebecca Horn. Bodies in Motion” Symposium & Screening

About

As the closing event of Rebecca Horn’s six-decade retrospective, Haus der Kunst is dedicating a one-day international symposium to Rebecca Horn’s transmedia oeuvre. Newly digitised films of Horn’s early performances are at the heart of the exhibition. In these films, body extensions are staged as performances, which not only represent historically significant experiments with physical boundaries but also explore the sensual and motor expansion of perception, leading us into controversial contemporary discourses.

Through panel discussions, conversations, and film screenings, the versatility of Horn’s work will be discussed from new perspectives. Internationally renowned voices will address the interrelated themes of embodiment, technology, dance, and choreography from contemporary post-human, performative, and art historical perspectives.

Programme
12.10.24 | Terrassensaal and Auditorium
All contributions are in English unless otherwise noted.

1.30 pm
Greeting
Andrea Lissoni, Artistic Director, Haus der Kunst, Munich
Sir Nicholas Serota, Chairman of Moontower Foundation, Chair of Arts Council England, former Director of Tate Galleries, London

Introduction
Jana Baumann, Senior Curator, Haus der Kunst

2.15 pm
Keynote Presentations and Panel Discussion I
Performativity of Bodies: The Power of Transformation

Hendrik Folkerts, Curator of International Contemporary Art and Head of Exhibitions, Moderna Museet, Stockholm
André T Lepecki, Professor of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
Lanka Tattersall, Laurenz Foundation Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Rebecca Horn’s multifaceted stagings of perceptual relationships begin with the dialogue-based coexistence of performer and audience. Her early performative and filmic works posed pivotal questions related to how we inhabit our bodies and how they can be transformative – a theme that becomes a leitmotif for all of her subsequent work. How does Horn use the symbolic content of dance movement as a medium and catalyst for choreographic and scenographic fictions? How do images of the body and movement intertwine?

3.30 pm
Break 

4 pm
Keynote Presentations and Panel Discussion II
Hybrid Beings: On Cyborgs and Body Concepts
Jack Halberstam, Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality; David Feinson Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University, New York
Amanda Cachia, Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the Masters of Arts in the Arts Leadership Graduate Program, Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts, University of Houston
Charlotte Matter, Research Associate at the Chair of Modern Art History, University of Zurich, and founding member of the research project Rethinking Art History through Disability
Sarah Sigmund, Research Associate, Research Center Technoaesthetics, Academy of Fine Arts, Munich 

In the context of post-humanism discourse and the advancement of systemic networks, Horn’s work is highly topical. She equates human and machine, which is why they can be read as elements of political technology. Horn makes the body tangible as a material to be controlled, one that is both disciplined and powerful. At the same time, she responds to the structural marginalisation of bodies. Horn makes visible the permeability of corporeal boundaries and points to the threat to individual bodies. How can her experiments with prostheses, skin garments, and apparatuses be read and understood in a biotechnological age?

5.15 pm
Break

5.30 pm
Keynote Presentations and Panel Discussion III
Choreographies of Perception: Cosmic Networks
Jana Baumann, Senior Curator, Haus der Kunst
Marta Dziewańska, Curator, KANAL, Brussels
Jessica Ekomane, Computer Musician and Artist, Lecturer in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, Berlin University of the Arts 

In Horn’s work, modes of perception and action seem metaphorically intertwined with contemporary technologies. These potential connections between living beings and machines promote an awareness of multilinearity and networks. From the early 1990s, Horn’s work expanded into large-scale installations. The audience engages in experiences of light, sound and rhythm. Her works question the nature of our bodies and our understanding of their collective organisation. How is the viewer’s perception addressed? And how is the hypnotic, spiritual, or psychotic character created?

6.30–7 pm
Closing discussion 

7.15 pm
Performance by Jessika Ekomane
Jessica Ekomane creates situations where the sound acts as a transformative element for the space and the audience. Her quadraphonic performances, characterised by their physical affect, seek a cathartic effect through the interplay of psychoacoustics, the perception of rhythmic structures and the interchange of noise and melody. Her ever-changing and immersive sonic landscapes are grounded in questions such as the relationship between individual perception and collective dynamics or the investigation of listening expectations and their societal roots.

8 pm
Film Screening of Buster’s Bedroom
Introduction and Conversation (in German)
Jana Baumann, Senior Curator, Haus der Kunst
Doris von Drathen, Professor of Art History, École Spéciale d’Architecture, Paris
Sandra Beate Reimann, Curator, Museum Tinguely, Basel 

Horn uses dramaturgy as a bridge between artists and spectators, bringing fictional events to life for the audience. In her feature films, the performing characters virtuously demonstrate different levels of perception, whether through object design or set production, character-making or animal-reimagining. Her last feature film, Buster’s Bedroom (1990), is set in ‘Nirvana House’, a psychiatric hospital in California. Through the fictional patients, Horn conveys complex emotions and multilayered perceptual relationships. The panellists discuss how Horn celebrates the power of the imagination and the inspirational figures who have influenced her work.

Buster’s Bedroom (1990), 104 min., English
Buster’s Bedroom is set in a former sanatorium in California, where the famous silent film star Buster Keaton once spent time. The film follows a young woman named Micha on a quest to find the ghost of Keaton, whom she worships. She meets the idiosyncratic residents, including an obsessed doctor played by Donald Sutherland. The film is an exploration of obsession, memory, and the fading glamour of the silent film era.

We thank all the participants and everyone involved in organising the symposium.

Curated by Jana Baumann

The exhibition and symposium are supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Funded by the Federal Government Comissioner for Culture and the Media.