The theatre and dance scholar and dramaturg Kirsten Maar, with moderation by Martin Hargreaves, discusses dance in the gallery. How do the features of performance and exhibition intermingle, and how do the specific qualities of each art form and its sites challenge our attention economies? Imposing the “choreographic” as a mode of assignment and spatio-temporal arrangement, she draws attention to the specifically kinaesthetic qualities audience experiences in these settings and further proposes an architectural framework within the choreography. She weaves together discussion of Trisha Brown’s work and many other artists from the Judson Church era with theoretical ideas from Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics and Claire Bishop’s criticisms of the same, considering how time and space shift the demands on both audience and performer, and ultimately, how we experience dance.
This talk was part of Crossing Borders 2014 and was presented in partnership with London Contemporary Dance School.
Kirsten Maar is a theatre and dance scholar at the Collaborative Research Centre 626 “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Aesthetic Limits” at the Free University Berlin. Her dissertation deals with assemblages and conceptions in the choreographic work of William Forsythe and its architectural relations. She is currently working on the connections between the Judson choreographers and the visual artists in the 1960s. Her research fields are the intersections between visuals arts, architecture and choreography, kinaesthetic experience and scoring practices. She is co-editor of “Assign and Arrange. Methodologies of Presentation in Art and Dance”, together with Maren Butte, Fiona McGovern, Marie-France Raphael und Jörn Schafaff (Sternberg /autumn 2014), among other publications.
