Secondary layes of reality: The situation according to this Berlin art trio.
“White Cubes bore us. We create disruptions to the liminal space between art and everyday life, testing its limits,” says Alberta Niemann of FORT Collective. The trio of Anna Jandt (born 1980 in Bremen), Jenny Kropp (1978, Frankfurt am Main) and Niemann (1982, Bremen) stage site-specific performances which range from running a hotel (“Hotel Marienbad”, 2006) to recreating street scenes (“The Golden Rule”, 2010). Creating a second layer of reality is the recurring theme in their works, shifting and estranging norms, and everyday references. “We didn’t define our practice as art at first,” they say. Instead it is an exploration of possibilities, test- ing the boundaries of what can be defined as art.
For instance, at their performance of “The Golden Rule” at Galerie lena Brüning, the artists decided to leave the gallery completely empty, and instead just to play music and offer drinks. “If the visitors were observant, one could see that the street scene kept on repeating itself,” they say. “The same man walked by eating a Capri ice-cream, people repeating the same actions on a five-minute loop, in time to the song playing. We appeared in overalls, hanging the poster for the show. In the end, every car driving off was suspected of being part of the performance.“ Viewer’s mindset is key to the works: FORT specifically want to avoid expectations on behalf of the audience that they will be witnessing “art”, as this defeats the intention of the piece. “Our expectation is not to create something that is obviously theatrical, otherwise the work just turns into a spectacle. We want to integrate our practice into the situation itself.”
They reference Jim Jarmusch’s concept of the non-space – a place where little, if anything, happens. “We like the idea of working in places that disappear afterwards – ‘Hotel Marienbad’ [2006] took place in an old customs house in Bremen that was due to be demolished. We had a hotel for three days, hosting guests. We were the cleaners, the chamber maids, and the spies.
We wanted to create this impression of timeless- ness, this feeling that you are playing a scene that never ends, particularly in combination with the non-spaces, this feeling of being in a mov- i.e, caught in a scene,” they say. “All three of us are fascinated by films, our passion for cinema exceeds our passion for art. Many of our performative works have a character reminiscent of movies. Films create a parallel reality – these strange artificial moments which engender a heightened sense of perception.”
Their studio space in a Kreuzberg side-street accommodates functional furniture and a stripped-down aesthetic, but reveals little evidence of the trio’s practice. Instead, installations are developed site-specifically. “We don’t create artworks that can be transported and made in advance, as each piece is created on-site. Thus they don’t have a classical studio practice, developing their ideas on walks or at each other’s homes. “We toss balls to each other, developing ideas on index cards, talk, smoke and drink together until we have created a detailed concept for each performance.” Pieces can take up to six months from initial conception to execution – for “Fort Hatchery Works”, the collective laboured on-site at a Neukölln district heating plant, setting up an assembly line for coal eggs – and depend on the availability of spaces and the cooperation of often bemused employees.
Their show, “Morgen letzter Tag” at Kunsthaus Dresden is their first institutional solo exhibition. The surroundings pose a challenge to the FORT Collective modus operandi: thus, their first move will be to subvert the space itself by barricading the museum façade with used timber, and to alter the rooms with large scale installations or by using sound. Institutional critique without the theory then – in characteristic FORT manner.
Text by Jeni Fulton