Total Romance: Partial Repair — HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark

Performance

with Rupert Enticknap and Yann Slattery

Isabel Lewis, Dirk Bell, *Ever/Repair*, 2024
Exhibition view, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, photo: kunst-dokumentation.com

The performance Total Romance: Partial Repair is the centerpiece of Isabel Lewis and Dirk Bell’s joint exhibition Ever/Repair at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, and will be performed by four performers. In collaboration with the two artists Lewis and Bell, the vocalist, performer and artist Rupert Enticknap and performer and pole dancer Yann Slattery will alter the newly adapted piece Maskarade (1970) by Sylvia Wynter in relation to the in-situ exhibition, by playing and interacting with it.

Different versions of the piece will be performed on two consecutive days. The version on July 5, will be a shorter, condensed version, followed by a longer, deconstructed version on July 6. In each performance, a text fragment by Jamaican author Sylvia Wynter dealing with a custom called Junkanoo will take center stage. The first version of the piece consists of a linguistic and choreographic interpretation of Wynter’s scene. The Junkanoo carnival allowed enslaved bodies to reverse social roles by slipping into different characters, such that they could occupy all positions from king to lover to lady or sir. Continuing to this day, this tradition as a carnivalesque performance with ideas of liberation and joy can reverse social and economic structures and can thus also be considered a practice of resistance. Anyone can become and be anything.

Dance, theater and carnival in its various forms have always offered the opportunity to exchange social roles and thus to not only expose social grievances, but also to offer and negotiate alternatives.

Free admission

Artists

Participating artists

Solo (a.o.): Galerie Wedding (2022, with Dirk Bell), Belvedere 21, Vienna (2021), Kunsthalle Zürich (2020), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019), dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2013), MoMA PS1, New York (2010), New Museum, New York (2009); Shows (a.o.): Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2023), 58. Biennale di Venezia (2019), 14th Sharjah Biennale (2019), Klöntal Triennale, Kunsthaus Glarus (2017) Tate Modern, London (2017), Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2017), Mofo, Contemporary Arts Tasmania, Hobart (2017), McaM Shanghai (2016), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016), Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (2016), Dia Art Foundation, New York (2016), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2015), Gothenburg Biennial of Art (2015), Liverpool Biennale (2014), Kunsthalle Basel (2014), PS122, New York (2010)

Solo (a.o.): Galerie Wedding (2022, with Isabel Lewis), BQ, Berlin (2022, 2016), QBBQ’s, Berlin (2019), Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2016), The Fireplace Project, New York (2015), SVIT, Prague (2013), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2011), The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2011), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2009); Shows (a.o.): Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2023), Kewenig, Berlin (2022), Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2022), BravinLee Programs, New York (2021), 1969 Gallery, New York (2021), Halle am Berghain, Berlin (2020), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2020), Sexauer Gallery, Berlin (2017), Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2017), Haus Mödrath – Räume für Kunst, Kerpen (2017), Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2016), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) (2015), Witte de With Centrum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Rotterdam (2014), GAK Bremen (2013), Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2011), Drawing Room, London (2010), Chelsea Art Museum, New York (2009)

Rupert Enticknap (UK) is a Berlin based vocalist, performer and artist. Their trans-disciplinary practice oscillates between and within opera, contemporary musics, dance and installations. They work mostly in collaboration with other artists and institutions. His approach to voice is highly influenced by notions of the choreographic, approaching music-making primarily as a bodily practice and working through the body to find non-linear paths of inquiry and performativity. Rupert’s own work is currently occupied with notions of failure, masculinities, the body as archive and English folk dance.

Yann Slattery (they/them/he/him) living and working in Basel is an artist and performer working in the intersections of performance, fashion & clothing and performative multimedia installation. Their praxis often moves in in-between spaces and circles around failure – success, tragedy/comedy, (ir)relevancies, intimacies and un-forgetting. Their recent interest lies in transforming spaces of intimacies of a strip club into their work, where boundaries of watchers and watched ones get blurry.

In their latest piece ‚PLAYBOIS‘ together with Yevheniya Kravets they use queer fiction and game structures with the interest of mocking and tricking power dynamics. Which has been shown in Humbug Basel, Performative Screenings Vienna and Zentralwäscherei Zurich. Together with Catol Teixeira, Thilda Bourqui and Helena M. Kabwe they have been invited to Perrrformat Zurich and created a one time t4t4t4t Tragic Horror-Comedy ‚Roses4S3x‘.

As a performer they’ve worked with Isabel Lewis at Kunsthalle Zürich for the Scalable Skeletal Escalator exhibition and for the Kantine in Sophiensaele, Nils Amadeus Lange, Monster Chetdwyd and Young boys dancing group.