![\"Allora](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/ARTBASEL2014_SSC_03_265.jpg\")
Allora & Calzadilla,\u00a0Revolving Door, 2011.\u00a0Presented at 14 Rooms in Basel by Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel, Theater Basel in 2014.\u00a0MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG<\/p>\n Allora & Calzadilla,\u00a0Revolving Door, 2011.\u00a0Presented at 14 Rooms in Basel by Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel, Theater Basel in 2014.\u00a0MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG<\/p>\n
One of the most anticipated shows at this year\u2019s Art Basel was the exhibition 14 ROOMS. Produced by three institutions (the Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel and Theater Basel), and curated by MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and Serpentine Gallery\u2019s Co-director Hans Ulricht Obrist, the bar was set high. Located on the site of the actual fair, 14 Rooms is situated in a built-in hall within a factory building, the central white aisle flanked by 14 silver mirrored doors on both sides. Behind these doors, every room is dedicated to the performance of a single artist: among them, Marina Abramovi?, Damien Hirst and Otobong Nkanga.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to rethink the exhibition and all of its elements as something like a generative, evolving open space, \u201c explained Hans Ulrich Obrist. \u00a0All 14 artists deal with matters of communication and interaction between the work and the public in various ways, following motifs of repetition, of restaging a performance and thus turning it into a document over time.<\/p>\n
Tino Sehgal\u2019s room, \u201cThis is competition\u201d, is all about the spoken word. In an attempt to describe an art piece, two performers alternate in a succession of words, where neither of them is allowed to speak more than one. No one wants to be the one to go blank first, so they challenge each other, but at the same time depend on one another\u2019s aligned interaction to keep the word flow, which leads to a funny, intelligent and demanding synergy. When Klaus Biesenbach enters the room to present the work to a collector, he seems just as delighted and amused about this vivid interplay as the crowd does.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very important to us that it feels like entering a domestic room with a door and not a gallery\u2026By opening the door, you step over a threshold and you overstep into somebody\u2019s privacy,\u201d Biesenbach says. \u201cIt will be a place that is simply social, where people go, where they don\u2019t have to buy anything but deal with in verbal matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Marina_Abramovic.jpg\")
Marina Abramovic?, Luminosity. 11 Rooms Manchester International Festival. Photo credit courtesy Manchester City Galleries<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, Marina Abramovic\u2019s piece, \u201cLuminosity\u201d, from 1997, serves as a good example for the expansion of boundaries. A woman sits naked on a bicycle seat, placed up high on the wall in the centre of a light square, raising her arms and spreading her legs like Da Vinci\u2019s Vitruvian man. As with all the rooms, the reaction of the spectators is one of the most interesting things to watch. Some of the visitors cannot bear the voyeurism, the blatant exposure of the female body and the presumed pain she must endure in these 30 minutes of constant concentration. Most of them leave after less than a minute.<\/p>\n
While walking through the show, it is questionable whether it is more the visitor or the artist who is facing the challenge here. Whereas the performers mainly seem to be in a state of meditation, slightly disconnected from reality, the spectator is in a constant state of curiosity and intensity while also dwelling on the feeling of intrusion and distance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Laura](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/ARTBASEL2014_SSC_03_332.jpg\")
Laura Lima, Man=flesh\/Woman=flesh \u2013 FLAT, 1997. Presented at 14 Rooms in Basel by Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel, Theater Basel in 2014. MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG<\/p>\n
To see Laura Lima\u2019s strong performance \u201cMan=Flesh\/Woman= Flesh \u2013 FLAT\u201d (1997), the visitor has to kneel down to see a person who is physically disabled lying in the back corner of a room where the height of the ceiling is only 45 centimetres. While I am lying down on the floor, I am immediately captured by a feeling of claustrophobia and physical constraint. One gets a slight idea of physical disability, and while watching the captive performer I find it a lot more unbearable than the almost meditative, waxwork-like Abramovic installation.<\/p>\n
Yoko Ono\u2019s chamber \u201cTouch Piece\u201d was first performed in 1963, and even works without any verbalization. The word \u201ctouch.\u201c written in white letters on the wall greets the visitor before walking through a black curtain. So, I don\u2019t find it surprising when a (I presume, male) hand guides me after I submerge into absolute darkness. I switch from visual perception to the senses of hearing and touching. Flawlessly, a hand guides me towards what I think to be a corner and before I even realize what is happening runs his hand up my arm, into my hair and kisses me. After a very brief moment of irritation I find my way through the darkness and out in the light. When I ask the guard at the door about the number of constant performers in the room he enlightens me: \u201cNone – the performance lives on random people entering and leaving the space.\u201d Well, then. Random it was. Only in the name of art does such a thing go hand in hand with intellectualism and social tolerance.<\/p>\n
![\"Otobong](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/ARTBASEL2014_SSC_03_306.jpg\")
Otobong Nkanga, Diaspore, 2014. Presented at 14 Rooms in Basel by Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel, Theater Basel in 2014.\u00a0MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG<\/p>\n
Klaus Biesenbach describes the idea of the mirrored hall as crucial to the experience of the whole show: \u201cVisitors stroll between the rooms, and through their reflected images become part of \u201814 Rooms\u2019 themselves.\u201d And it’s true, having spent over 70 minutes in the mirrored halls of performance, one feels a certain comfort, like becoming a part of the steady flow going from one door to the next, \u00a0belonging to the stream of curiosity that accompanies the eager visitors each time they open a door, and \u00a0sharing the mutual feeling of experience that unites all visitors as spectators but also as actors in this multi-layered interplay.<\/p>\n