Feeling Alive. The Performative Potentia

„Feeling Alive. The Performative Potential of Curating“.
Empty Stages, Crowded Flats. Performativity as Curatorial Strategy.
Florian Malzacher & Joanna Warsza (Eds). Berlin: Alexander Verlag. 28-41.

FLORIAN MALZACHER

FEELING ALIVE

THE PERFORMATIVE
POTENTIAL OF
CURATING

28

he concept of curating has arrived in the ield of performing
arts, and with it the understanding that programming performances, theatre works, dance pieces, or music can be more than
just selecting or producing shows and then inserting them into
a time slot and space. here is a necessity of puting works into
larger contexts, to have them interact with each other and the
world that informs them. And there is a possibility of creating a
collective experience not only within the performance itself, but

rather turning a programme, festival, event, or venue into a
larger ield of communication and communing.
Even though concepts of curating within the ield of visual
arts are clearly more elaborated than within the performing arts,
the relation between them has always been more reciprocal than
is oten acknowledged. Ater all it is no coincidence that Harald
Szeemann, in many ways the prototype of a contemporary curator, compared his work to that of a theatre director, and that art
theorist Beatrice von Bismarck emphasises the propinquity of
an exhibition-maker s task to that of a dramaturg.
But taking Szeemann s idea of staging exhibitions seriously takes us even further. It raises the question of how curation
not only generally borrows (and oten without any awareness)
the tools of theatre, performance, and choreography but rather
how it could gain even more from these practices by consciously integrating their very strategies and techniques, and by
understanding curation itself as performative.
Performing the Performative
he impressive (and sometimes exaggerated) career of the concept
of the performative began with J. L. Austin s speech acts , introduced in his set of lectures How to Do hings with 0ords ( 9 ).
As a precursor to the idea of performativity it described verbal
uterances that exercise the transformative capacity of an act
that constitutes or changes reality. he mainly linguistic discourse

that followed Austin was, in the early 99 s, the base for Judith
Butler s radical interpretation of gender as something that is
performed and constructed via speech or physical action: reality

29

as a social construction coming to existence by permanently
repeating and quoting. Performativity for Butler is, as described
in Bodies that Mater ( 99 ), that reiterative power of discourse
to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.
0hile deinitions of performativity are numerous, oten
contradictory, and regularly rather vague, most are connected
to a constructivist belief that there are no fixed concepts of
objectivity, reality, or truth, and that everything is constructed
individually, inluenced by context and interaction.
Inluential impulses in theatre and performance studies came
next to the linguist arguments from ethnographical and anthropological discourses: the term cultural performance was introduced in 9 9 by ethnologist Milton Singer s book Traditional
India: Structure and Change. Singer believed that in many cultures
performances, like dances, theatre, and rituals (deined by having
a dramaturgy, a division between performer and audience, a

framed time, a speciic reason and place etc.) enable people to
reassure themselves of their traditions and identities. Anthropologist Victor Turner continued to develop the concept of
cultural performance, which was picked up by theatre makers
and theorists like Richard Schechner, who collaborated with
Turner, applied his discoveries to theatre, and pushed them
further. As diferent as all these concepts of the performative are
they all emphasise in one way or the other its reality-making
capacity , as Shannon Jackson puts it in this book.
2et there is another strand of the use of the word performative equally vague and additionally rather colloquial. It describes,
again in Jackson s words, art works that are theatre-like but not
theatre , mainly to provide an umbrella to cluster recent crossdisciplinary work in time, in space, with bodies, in relational
encounters. Jackson calls this the intermedial use of the performative vocabulary that oten foregrounds the sometimes productive, sometimes uncomfortable, relation between the performing
arts and the visual arts.
Keeping Szeemann in mind, it is this very notion of theatrelike but not theatre that despite oten being dismissed as too
literal, opens up a whole range of possibilities when applied to
the processes and products of curating: how can the understanding of dramaturgy, time management, narration, process, use of
space, the co-presence of the audience, role play etc. many of

30

which were already important for Singer s deinition of cultural performance inform curatorial work?
To my belief the curatorial potential of the performative
does not lie in dividing these two strands but rather in thinking
about them together as diferent aspects of the same approach:
adapting theatre-like strategies and techniques enables the
curation of reality making situations that not only describe
reality but create an awareness of their own realness. By puting
the focus less on the product or the result (as Austin s speech act
still does) but on its own becoming, performative curating highlights liveness, the co-presence of all participants, the (temporary)
community all this being core aspects of most deinitions of
theatre and performance.
From the point of view of curatorial praxis, it is at least an
unnecessary limitation to separate the more linguistic, anthropological, or philosophical ( reality-making ) concepts of the
performative from its rather literal theatre-like use. In diference
to Dorothea von Hantelmann who in he Experimental Turn
(
) dismisses the later deinition as a mere misunderstanding , I would insist on the connection to the tools of live arts. Not
only because Austin, Singer, Turner, and Butler themselves
clearly referenced theatre in their writings, but because in turn
their discourse was referenced again by theatre and performance

makers and changed the artistic practice. One could say that by
performing the performative a new reality of performative
performances was created.
heatre has always been a social and a self-relexive art
form, as much as conventional approaches have been trying to
neglect it. heatre is a paradoxical machine that allows us to
observe ourselves while being part of the performance. It does
not create an artiicial outside of pure criticality but neither is it
able to lure in mere immersive identiication (even though it
sometimes tries). heatre marks a space where things are real
and not real at the same time, it creates situations and practices
that are symbolic and actual at once. A curatorial thinking that
makes conscious use of this knowledge underlines its own relational aspects and highlights social and political implications
it creates spaces of negotiation (as several examples in this
book clearly show).
he proximity to theatre can also be seen in concepts of the
curatorial itself, for example, when art theorist Irit Rogof in

31

conversation with Beatrice von Bismarck in Cultures of the Curatorial (
) poses the question of how to instantiate 4the curatorial6 as a process, how to actually not allow things to harden,
and how to create a public platform that allows people to take
part in these processes . The curatorial is a dynamic field
(Bismarck) of liveness, transformation, and ephemerality.
his very fear that the work may seem too complete, too
much like a inished product is an integral part of all live arts,
where the permanent possibility of failure, chance, mistakes, and
loss of control are not seen as unavoidable laws, but rather as
the core of the medium. Instead of ignoring these obstacles,
embracing them may be seen as a key curatorial strategy for
creating a tension that emphasises the very aliveness that is
inherent even in the most conventional repertory theatre, dance
company, or music ensemble. Expanding, shortening, interrupting, or varying time (thus navigating the physical or mental
strength, exhaustion, boredom, or enthusiasm of the collective
body of the visitors) can create such an awareness, as well as
creating specific densities of spatial complexities. Inventing
speciic dramaturgies or playing with the potential and limitations of narration or scores is another option, along with confronting works that might not be compatible at irst sight, in order to
create both tension and openness through their friction. he list
can be extended and the possibilities are vast. he many concrete

examples in this book developed by curators as well as artists,
dramaturgs, and activists reveal how much understanding the
curatorial as performative means by puting a focus on the here
and now. At best it creates a temporary reality particular but
porous that connects to many other realities, thus enabling
art works to be experienced not as autonomous entities, but well
within their own rights, their own lives, and in relation to others.
Empty stages, crowded lats
heatre still is mostly bound to certain spaces reserved exclusively for its practice: proscenium stages and black boxes. But
even in the most conventional settings an awareness of the
speciicity of the space can produce artistic or curatorial added
value. How does the audience enter the space? 0hen does the
performance actually begin? At the entrance to the theatre? In
the foyer, in the auditorium? 0hat diference does it make when
I have to enter a diferent way than usual? Is that part of the

32

performance or mere pragmatics? 0hat are the rules of the
theatrical contract in that case?

Even conventional theatre spaces are not neutral. On one
hand they provide the necessary technical equipment, protect
the work from unwanted encounters with the surroundings,
enable concentration, protect artistic clarity, and so on. On the
other hand the spaces themselves already largely deine the
possible outcome. Not only are they limited in terms of architecture and possible spatial arrangements, they also represent a
certain idea of the institution as it was mainly formed in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. heir inherent structures not only reproduce certain conventions of what theatre
was and is supposed to be, but also a certain image of society.
hey frame and oten tame artistic as well as political visions. It
is therefore no surprise that many curatorial projects in the ield
of theatre either leave these predetermined spaces behind or try
to challenge them (as the choreographers deufert&plischke
together with dramaturg Jeroen Peeters did with their project
B-Visible, as described in this volume).
he hype around site-speciic works, mainly from the mid99 s on, brought a special focus on space by leaving theatres
and occupying supposedly non-artistic spaces, seeking something
authentic or to contradict the seemingly authentic. his move
into the city (and very oten to the outskirts of the city, to empty
industrial areas, half-ruined factories, and vast storage places) is

closely linked to the desire for the real behind all strands of
so-called documentary theatre, which only a few years later
became so extremely popular. But it also its into the logic of
gentriication, at least symbolically occupying spaces that were
reserved for others.
Using the designated areas of theatre against the grain as
deufert&plischke did or even abandoning them completely
not only challenges the institution but the artistic work itself,
by showing both the limitations and the possibilities of the genre
as such. 0orking conditions become messy or even tough, chance
and contingency may take over, the audience may have to be
organised diferently, and technical possibilities may be limited.
Site-speciic work cannot just transfer the logic of a theatre venue
into another spatial situation. It needs to be more than a mere
reaction to the situation, a pragmatic response that deals with
the disadvantages or adapts initial plans only as much as neces-

33

sary. Such work gains momentum when it adapts the logic of

the circumstances, pushes them or purposely contradicts them.
It needs to be context-responsive and make the space as such
(and not merely a limited portion of it, the set, for example) part
of its form and content. But not by surrendering: obedience to
the space easily creates boredom, and when narration, atmosphere, movement, space, and the rest come too closely together,
it may simply result in a semantic shortcut and all the artistic
tension is gone.
One of the most famous site-speciic curatorial projects in
the performing arts X Apartments (
-) by the German curator Matthias Lilienthal actually has an even more famous
predecessor. For his iconic exhibition Chambres d’Amis (Guest
Rooms) curator Jan Hoet in 98 convinced more than inhabitants of the city of Ghent to let artists work in and with their
residences. His concept of displacement , which he later also
used for documenta I1, aimed for the shits in perception that
occur when something is experienced in an unusual context. He
removed the art from the exclusive gallery spaces it usually is
bound to: I am disturbed by the idea that art is here, and reality
is there, separated, as he stated in the New York Times article
Avant-Garde Art Show Adorns Belgian Homes ( 98 ). In Chambres d’Amis one should have the impression that you are in the
work, not just in front of it. Each artist (among them Joseph

Kosuth, Sol Le0it, and Mario Merz) used one or two rooms to
create a work that relected its surroundings. Since these were
residences in use, encounters and discussions with the owners
were an integral part of the concept.
0hile Chambres d’Amis exclusively featured works of
visual art, it efectively created its own performativity by triggering the imagination of the visitors: the walks between the
homes enabled very diferent individual narrations and dramaturgies, and in the private seting of a residence were just as open
to interpretation as the artworks themselves.
Mathias Lilienthal further enhanced this dimension years
later with X-Apartments, commissioning mainly theatre directors,
choreographers, and performers to invent small performances
within the diferent lats. By introducing a time structure the
audience remains for the whole time of each short performance
and then wanders on as the next group arrives it collectivises
the experience for the visitors. Not only the diferent venues ,

34

but the bodies moving through them from one space to another
become part of the experience, much more than the sum of the
performances. X-Apartments plays with the spirit of an expedition, connecting the audience, which is arbitrarily mixed and
might not have previously known each other.
0hile the quantity of lats, the extraordinary in the ordinary,
the shit of perception towards everyday setings are key to X
Apartments, Polish curator Joanna 0arsza chose for her project
Finissage of Stadium X (
- 8), as described by Ewa Majewska in this book, a venue with symbolic power. he tenth Anniversary Stadium in 0arsaw was built in 9 from the rubble of
the war-ruined Polish capital. It stood for the idea of Communism
and a new Poland but by the mid- 98 s it had been abandoned
and itself became a modern ruin. New life was brought to it by
Vietnamese and Russian traders who took it over as pioneers
of a newly arrived capitalism. he heterogeneity of the site, the
debates around the new national stadium built for the European soccer championship in
and the lack of a critical
debate on Poland s post-war architectural legacy inspired the
three-year Finissage that included acoustic walks, performances, a radio station as well as subjective excursion guided by
artists and activists.
An almost ironic twist to the notion of site-speciicity was
brought by the project he heatre by architect Tor Lindstrand
and choreographer and theorist Mårten Spångberg. heir longterm interdisciplinary project International Festival, created in
, positioned itself somewhere between theatre, choreography,
architecture, and curating. Playfully and at times subversively,
they isolated and investigated diferent aspects of what a festival
consists of: he Welcome Package (Tanz im August,
), for
example, was just a bag, seemingly like the ones festivals give
to invited artists, but here designed to focus a heterogeneous
atention to the conventions of festivals. he idea of curating not
only other artists but also performers and even other festivals,
was then further radicalised with IF Plastic Bags, thousands of
them, with the IF logo given out by International Festival to
theatre venues all over Europe for them to use and distribute.
For the steirischer herbst festival
, International Festival
developed their by far most ambitious project, building a complete
venue as a performance and curatorial statement: he heatre
was the re-enactment of a theatre by building one. he develop-

35

ment was accompanied by a series of workshops involving various artists, architects, theoreticians, and the like itself a kind
of social performance with an open result. he heatre turned
everything that in theatre is not theatre into theatre including
the x -metre lexible stage. As important as this conceptual
trick, which enabled a diferent view of the notion of space by
turning it into a performance and thereby into a time-based art
work, was the lack of interest in things that would normally have
also played an important role: the aesthetics of the architecture
were rather generic and pragmatic, and the programming of the
space mainly delegated to the festival s curators.
Escaping the highly determined and symbolically loaded spaces
of theatre can mean ending up in spaces that are even more
determined and symbolically loaded: the white cubes of museums
and galleries. he increasing interest in all kinds of living in the
last years has many causes, some as profane as trying to break
into other markets or into discourses with seemingly higher
prestige. But for most artists and curators the initial motivation
is still close to Hoet s idea of displacement . By changing the
institutional, aesthetical, and architectural frame, the grids of
perception and relection change as well.
Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has been for many years one of
the main protagonists in integrating performative aspects into
visual art exhibitions. Since the 99 s he has been collaborating
with choreographers like Meg Stuart and 1avier Le Roy, and later
produced several time-based shows, like Il Tempo del Postino in
(together with Philippe Parreno). Tino Sehgal, probably by
far the best known contemporary artist inserting live arts into
museums and galleries, always produces his work on the edge
between choreography and visual art and many of his thoughts
on performance are shared by 1avier Le Roy, who has collaborated with him, as in Project (
). In
Le Roy presented for
the irst time his live Retrospective, an exhibition conceived as a
choreography of actions that will be carried out by performers
for the duration of the exhibition, as the artist s website states.
Le Roy uses the format and genre of a retrospective to revisit
material from his solo choreographies by leting the performers
re-create their own memories of and stories connected to them.
And he emphasises the moment of time by producing frictions
between the diferent time experiences that are brought togeth-

36

er: the time span of the revisited œuvre, the time spent by each
visitor, the working time of the performers, and the duration of
the whole exhibition, which creates with its permanent changes
a dramaturgy of its own.
Boris Charmatz s expo zéro (
9-), part of his Musée de la
danse, is an exhibition, a living, dancing, talking exhibition, and
as a permanent exchange. Experts from various ields choreographers, writers, performers, directors, theorists, visual artists,
architects irst spent four days together in a kind of think tank
and then open the space to the public, presenting movements,
thoughts, words, and more, engaging with each other in verbal
and non-verbal communications. 0hat belongs in a Musée de la
danse? hinking the museum means simultaneously creating it.
A museum of dance can only be ephemeral (the zero in the title
refers to the absence of objects).
Speeding up, slowing down
0hile in Retrospective and expo zéro time is considered an important factor, for many other live exhibitions it seems to be rather
an accessory. As much as Obrist verbally stresses his interest in
duration, looking closely at his time-based curations, the real
potential of liveness seems rather neglected. 11 rooms (co-curated with Klaus Biesenbach), for example, is an exhibition placing
live art works in white cubes: the performances are clearly
framed as works of art, like objects in a rather old-fashioned
exhibition. he performances last a whole day throughout the
duration of the exhibition, but the conventions of watching are
challenged. Maybe the time viewers watch is longer than the
infamous
seconds devoted on average to each art work in
most exhibitions, but there is no interest in creating a durational experience for the visitor, not even in the durational
experience of the performer, the changing shapes of his body,
his atitude, and so on. It is durational because that is what the
classic format of exhibitions demands. For Obrist and many of
the artists he works with, the main interest is in replacing objects
with people, not in developing art works consisting of people.
he approach is (with some exceptions) mostly sculptural or
spatial: the material is the human being. Or as Obrist himself
says on the project s website: 11 Rooms is like a sculpture gallery
where all the sculptures go home at pm .

37

But time is a more powerful tool than this, as consequently
shown in post-dramatic theatre that replaces the ictional time
of drama with real time, insisting on creating a situation rather
than representing it. heatre in this understanding is not necessarily deined through a story, through iction, through makebelieve, and dramaturgical arcs, and the like (even though it may
include all this). It is deined by creating a temporarily shared
reality. And this, too, is an opportunity for performative curating.
Curation as public sphere
he theatre is the space in which societies have long explored
their own means, procedures, ideals, and limits. It is, as Hannah
Arendt states in he Human Condition ( 9 8), the political art
par excellence; only there is the political sphere transposed into
art . Taking this heritage into the ield of curating in a time
when presumed political certainties have been pulverized and
our democracies put under permanent threat poses a crucial
challenge to our practice. Chantal Moufe s concept of agonistic
pluralism, aiming at bringing out diferent positions in struggle
and disaccord, for example in he Democratic Paradox (
),
enables us to think about democracy as a public sphere that
allows for the possibility of conlict. Much in the same way that
the concept of the curatorial can be thought of as performative,
the concept of agonistic pluralism almost seems like paraphrasing theatre. It is not by chance that Moufe adopted this term
from Greek agon, contest , in the plural games , the competition
of athletes and arguments before an assembly in Greek epic,
sport, and tragedy. On a small scale, theatrical and curatorial
concepts can create such spheres of open exchange, even in
societies in which free speech is scarce or in 0estern democracies where the space between consensus and antagonism is
becoming increasingly narrow. Art not in but as public space
to use a distinction drawn by art theorist Miwon Kwon in One
Place Ater Another (
) might be one of the most important
contributions of performative curating.
Truth is Concrete to add an example of my own practice was
an ambitious curatorial project that took place in September
in Graz, Austria, in which we (the curatorial team of steirischer
herbst festival) atempted to push this notion to an extreme. he
starting point was the strong impression made by the role of

38

artists in the political turmoil all over the world, as well as the
open question of the role artistic strategies might play in these
situations. Perceived well before the Occupy movement began
and happening shortly ater its irst anniversary, the Truth is
Concrete marathon brought together more than
artists, activists, and theorists. hey were joined by
students and young
professionals, as well as by a local and international audience,
to meet on the small but common territory of art and activism:
a -hour-a-day, -day-a-week marathon camp with
hours
of lectures, performances, productions, and discussions to pool
useful strategies and tactics in art and politics.
he marathon machine ran nonstop oten too fast, sometimes too slow producing thought, arguments, and knowledge,
but it also created frustration and exhaustion. It used time as a
tool to generate an extreme social experience. But by doing so,
was it not it just creating a mirror or even a fulilment of the
neo-liberal agenda of more and more, of extreme labour and
permanent availability? Truth is Concrete aimed in the opposite
direction: this machine did not set a task that could be fulilled.
It could not be easily commodiied, nor easily consumed. here
was no right time; it wasn t built around highlights. So there was
actually not one marathon, but many individual ones: having to
miss out was part of having to make choices. Truth is Concrete
was not only interested in the intellectual intensity it produced.
It was also interested in physical intensity, in the impact this
encounter had on our bodies. In the here and now.
It was as machinic, as rigid as a marathon, running in the
centre: surrounded by a camp-like living and working environment developed by raumlaborberlin, a social space with its own
needs and timing, creating a one-week community, mixing up
day and night, developing its own jetlag with respect to the
outside world. he vertical gesture of the marathon machine was
embedded in a horizontal structure of openness, with organised
one-day workshops and several durational projects and an exhibition, but most importantly with the parallel open marathon
based on self-organisation, the contents produced entirely by
participants spontaneously stepping into the slots.
Knowing and not-knowing
If performative curating creates framed social situations, then
production and exchange of knowledge become key issues. In

39

recent years many approaches were developed combining
performative tools and formats of knowledge productions, creating theatrical conferences, choreographed panels, and staged
lectures. Notably, projects by scholars like Sibylle Peters, Stefanie
0enner, or Gesa 3iemer but also curator Mathias von Hartz s
go create™ resistance (
- ), a series of evenings focussing on
art and activism at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg (and an inspiration for Truth is Concrete) have created formats of theatrical
conferences, choreographed panels, and staged lectures. Unfriendly Takeover & Multitude e.V. s Dictionary of War (
- ), or
the performative conference Appropriations (
) I devised for
the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, can also be seen in this line.
But probably best known and most inluential in the ield
of artistic and curatorial knowledge projects are Hannah Hurtzig s
installations for knowledge distribution: in her work, theory and
praxis, content and form are hardly divisible any more. he Kiosk
for Useful Knowledge, for example a format she originally
developed together with curator Anselm Franke (who originally
coming from theatre) is a construction of public spaces
experimenting with new narrative formats for the production
and mediation of knowledge, as the project s website states.
Professional knowledge and theoretical discourses meet individual narrations: the distribution of knowledge becomes graspable for an audience that is at once voyeur and witness to an
almost intimate conversation: and two protagonists exchange
their expertise in form of a personal narration, which we can
only participate in in a mediated fashion by transmited image
and sound. his principle is ampliied in the Blackmarket for
Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge, an installation for
experts seated at small tables. Here everyone can buy a half-hour
of intimate and expert knowledge for one Euro: from scientists
and artists to hairdressers and fortune tellers, facts, experiences,
self-help, or simply some insights into areas of knowledge
completely unknown to you, and knowledge that is always
connected to the person who is passing it on. And in the way it
is passed on: in all her knowledge installations Hurtzig has
emphasised the performative character of knowledge exchange.

create discursive spheres. hey combine both aspects of the term
performativity becoming themselves partly theatre-like by
using tools, strategies, and methodologies of the live arts in order
to curate reality making situations
and by this push the
possibilities of curating as a social or even political practice.
heatre director Peter Brook in his book he Empty Space
( 9 8) tells the story of some kids in Mexico at a time before the
wheel was invented: Gangs of slaves had to carry giant stones
through the jungle and up the mountains , while alongside them,
their children pulled their toys on tiny rollers. he parents did
not understand that the very wheels they used when building
toys for their kids were actually a much more powerful tool. hey
did not make the connection. Brook used this image to show that
theatre might be considered by most a nice pastime, a toy. But
that it in fact can be much more: a means of moving things.
Maybe we, too, curators or programmers of theatre, dance,
performance, and music, still do oten not suiciently understand
that the wheel of performativity that we constantly watch in
theatre, choreography, and performance is a tool too powerful
not to make use of as well.

All these examples, and the many others collected in the second
part of this book, emphasise in one way or the other the potential of a curatorial approach that uses performativity as a tool to

40

41