Vexed Vista / Adam Linder copyright R. Etienne
For the 2016 Hammer Biennial, dancer Adam Linder presented a three-man routine entitled “Kein Paradiso”. Over the course of the event, the choreographer received continuous praise for his success in bringing increased attention to the art of dance. Well, it appears the hard work is finally paying off, with Linder being announced as winner of this year’s Hammer Museum Mohn Award. In a statement with the Los Angeles Times earlier this week, the artist calls the $100,000 win a “big deal” for the discipline, adding: “Dance is definitely not at the top of the disciplinary pinnacle in museums, but I think there is a resurgent invitation into the visual arts and museological practice in the last decade.”
Last year, Linder was featured as One to Watch for “Choreographic Service 2: Some Proximity”, a performance in which the choreographer danced for cash to provoke questions about art and money. Read more about it below.
Portrait by David Gomez
In the heart of the flurry of shopping and schmoozing that was last year’s Frieze London art fair, Adam Linder, a Los Angeles and Berlin-based choreographer, presented his “Choreographic Service 2: Some Proximity”, a choreographed dance that raises questions about the social and economic conditions through which contemporary culture is produced. In Some Proximity, performed on an hourly ‘for hire’ basis, Linder and a second dancer directed each other in a series of movements while reading out loud a score written by a third collaborator, an art critic reflecting in near realtime on the events of the art fair. Within the stark white exhibition booth, the dancers, clad in utilitarian denim work suits, read and danced together in a performance that contrasted the virtuosity of their movements with the spontaneity and criticality of the spoken text.
Adam Linder, Choreographic Service No.2, Some Proximity, 2014. Two dancers and a writer, duration variable, courtesy the choreographer and Silberkuppe, Berlin. Photo by Polly Brandon
In light of the increasing inclusion of live performance within typically object-based art contexts, in recent years, Linder began to question the role of embodied movement within the circulation of art economies. Linder says, “I started to think about choreography as a practice and as labour. What kind of conditions and economic exchange are necessary that differentiates it from an object-based economy?” In questioning the underlying economic and social systems of the contemporary art world through the framework of embodied labour, Linder is in the lineage of artists for whom service-oriented actions form the basis of their work, such as the feminist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. By expanding on this critical history through the structures of choreography, Linder – who will present Some Proximity this summer in MOCA’s performance programme, “Step and Repeat” – is reinvigorating and shifting how we think about the performing body as a site of history, knowledge and exchange.
Taken from Sleek #46 Contemporary Collaboration