Adam Linder, Service No. 4: Some Strands of Support, 2016 Photograph by Shahryar Nashat
The 2016’s edition of Gallery Weekend will see Berlin-based performance artist and choreographer Adam Linder push the limits of collaborative work at Schinkel Pavilion with long time collaborator Shahryar Nashat. Linder who’s had appearances the ICA and Frieze Projects in London has shifted his practice from classical dance into the visual arts, with time-based choreographies that comment on real-time economic principles that support creative labour. Having previously worked with Nashat this is their first time doing a two-person show together. “Shahryar’s adapted my work for film or I have performer in his videos,” says Linder. “But our individual works have never been placed side-by-side.”
Adam Linder, Service No. 4: Some Strands of Support, 2016 Photograph by Shahryar Nashat
By Presenting Shahryar’s video-sculpture diptych “Hard Up for Support” alongside Linder’s “Service No. 4: Some Strands of Support” choreography, the show part of the series “Porzellan und Vulkan” (Porcelain and Volcano) investigates whether two practices can be shown alongside each other without assimilating into one voice.
Shahryar Nashat Hard Up for Support, 2016 Still from HD video Courtesy of Silberkuppe, Berlin and Rodeo, London
The set up in this collaboration also questions traditional concepts of authorship, and the division of labour. In his practice Linder often hires other performers and by selling his work clearly as a service with an hourly rate, laying bare the systems of production and consumption in the arts. “I try to find the most accurate way to acknowledge the people that contribute to my work and not to treat them like just a ‘dancing body’ but a specific person who is dancing,” he says.
Shahryar Nashat Hard Up for Support, 2016 Still from HD video Courtesy of Silberkuppe, Berlin and Rodeo, London
Despite the need for most performance art to be filmed in order to become marketable Adam Linder still wants his work to be experienced live. “I love working in the theatre but its heavy machinery trying to get a stage work to look tight with light, sound and scenography, he says. “So I needed a format where I could just focus on the relations of choreography and not the visuality of staging. The Services have been kind of nourishing in that way.”
With its premier at Gallery Weekend, the series “Porzellan und Vulkan” will run for a year at the Schinkel Pavilion and will survey forms of collaborative work as a strategy in current artistic practice.
Shahryar Nashat Hard Up for Support, 2016 Still from HD video Courtesy of Silberkuppe, Berlin and Rodeo, London
“Porzellan und Vulkan” Opens with Adam Linder’s “Some Strands of Support” and Shahryar Nashat’s “Hard Up for Support” on 27 April 2016, at 6pm at Schinkle Pavilion, Berlin