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Nick Mauss, Frieze Projects, 2014. Courtesy Linda Nylind \/ Frieze. Photo Linda Nylind.<\/p>\n Nick Mauss, Frieze Projects, 2014. Courtesy Linda Nylind \/ Frieze. Photo Linda Nylind.<\/p>\n
Art fairs have become hybrid beings, caught between the conflicting demands of commerce and their desire to create a unique visitor experience. Given the rise of the experience economy and the contemporary visitor\u2019s desire for the micro-encounter and the #artselfie this has translated to increasingly elaborate performances taking place on site. This achieved its momentary apex in Hans Ulrich Obrist\u2019s and Klaus Biesenbach\u2019s 14 Rooms performance exhibition at Art Basel in June 2014, which included renowned performance auteur Damien Hirst among others. The theatricality of such affairs has little in common with traditional performance art: as performance pioneer Vito Acconci said about Marina Abramovich, the \u201cconstant presence of an audience turned her so-called performance into theater,\u201d labeling her performance The Artist is Present at MoMA as \u201cthe worst he\u2019s ever seen\u201d, in an interview with the New York Observer.\u00a0 Performance at an art fair is geared towards an audience, towards theatricality, towards Instagram: how can an artist, then, create a piece for a fair which avoids this compromise and remains an artwork in itself? Artist Nick Mauss\u2019 answer was to cast his performance, \u201c1nversions1\u201d, a recital-cum-ballet for Frieze London.
\nDespite his young age \u2013 he was born in 1980 \u2013 London-based Nick Mauss is an artist of some renown. His drawings are held in MoMA and Whitney Museum collections, and he has participated in notable exhibitions. In 2012, he exhibited a reconstruction of Guerlain\u2019s first Institut de Beaut\u00e9 spa in Paris from 1939 at the Whitney Biennal. This translocated room served as a manifestation of another time and space, and was intended to halt visitors in their tracks and encourage them to linger, casting them as actors on a stage. It was this installation-as-stage that attracted the attention of Frieze Projects curator Nicola Lees, and she commissioned Mauss to produce a performance for Frieze London, a living stage for a new ballet. It was a new way of working for Mauss, whose hybrid practice encompasses drawing, sculpture and curating.
\n\u201cWhen Nicola Lees proposed to me to consider working with a ballet group, it was completely new \u2013 no curator had ever suggested that to me. I\u2019m interested in making exhibitions where people become very aware of space, which is how you would think about ballet.\u201d he says. \u201cI realised that this is absolutely something I want to do.\u201d It is an unusual constellation: while artists have often worked with choreographers \u2013 witness Picasso\u2019s collaboration with the Ballets Russes, or Robert Rauschenberg\u2019s collaboration with Merce Cunningham \u2013 it is novel that an artist should commission a ballet. \u201cThis project for Frieze\u00a0is more in line with curating an exhibition. It’s about collaborating with the choreographer, with the dancers, and making this piece which is as much my false projections on ballet as a ballet itself,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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Nick Mauss. Photo by David Urbanke<\/p>\n
Mauss worked together with a large cast of fellow artists, ranging from musician and artist Kim Gordon, DJ Marco Gomez (False Witness) to Juliana Huxtable, a model, DJ and writer and the Northern Ballet Company. Mauss worked with Lorena Randi, a choreographer on the dramaturgy, and designed the state set, which looked like a ballet studio with barres and mirrors, drawing in the rest of the fair, with the public which constantly enters and leaves the stage scene. Visitors thus become participants, as opposed to remaining in their audience role. Nick Mauss, Frieze Projects, 2014. Courtesy Linda Nylind \/ Frieze. Photo Linda Nylind. Art fairs have become hybrid beings, caught between the conflicting demands of commerce and their desire to create a unique visitor experience. Given the rise of the experience economy and the contemporary visitor\u2019s desire for the micro-encounter and the #artselfie this has…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[2136,2137,2138,482,514,2139,141,472,2140,2141],"class_list":["post-19153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-ballet","tag-choreographer","tag-david-urbanke","tag-frieze","tag-jeni-fulton","tag-linda-nylind","tag-london","tag-moma","tag-nick-mauss","tag-whitney-museum"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nGordon and Huxtable wrote and performed text (with Gordon wearing a pair of fetching leggings emblazoned with the words \u2018Die Collector Scum\u2019, at the VIP preview). \u201c<\/b>I was trying to imagine what kind of music I would want to hear if I was watching a ballet. I had been reading Kim’s writing and then I saw Juliana giving a reading – the text was an amazing series of anecdotes. Kim\u2019s writing is about walking through the art fair and how awkward and almost debilitating it is,\u201d Mauss says.\u00a0The Northern Ballet performed a series of pieces, Huxtable, Gordon and the dancers alternating, \u201cresponding to the fair environment as a place of constant movement and social dance.\u201d
\nThe elements feel very disparate \u2013 after all, what connects Gordon\u2019s discordant guitar, with Huxtable\u2019s reading and elements of classic ballet? \u201cI always thought of this as a piece where each performer would maintain total independence: just give them the framework that I have established and have them do whatever it is that would be interesting for them to do,\u201c Mauss notes.
\nPerhaps, then, Mauss\u2019 piece should be viewed through the lens of a \u201chappening\u201d as opposed to a (ballet) performance. Performance artist Alan Kaprow first coined the term in 1957 to mean situations or performances that were to be read as art. They could occur anywhere and at any time, with non-linear narratives and with audience involvement. They inspired Seventies choreographers like Yvonne Rainier to unite dancers, musicians and visual artists on an equal footing to obscure genre boundaries. Improvisation also formed a vital element. \u201c1nversions1\u201d, then, can be seen as a continuation of this tradition, with Mauss incorporating audience, improvised elements and chance occurrences into the performance. As he says \u201cI was observing the dancers at during rehearsals. I saw two ballerinas lying on the floor looking at text messages and I asked them, \u201cIs that something you could do?\u201d They understood what I was interested in wasn\u2019t just the performance, but these casual moments that take place just a few feet away in a different headspace.\u201d
\nPerformance timings, with Gordon and Huxtables recitals interweaving with the ballet routines are reminiscent of the classic elements of improvisation, where improvised elements occur with a pre-determined structure. \u201cThere’s a moment when the ballet is doing a warm-up routine, and then they get into costume and are painted, and Juliana arrives to\u00a0play, and it’s sort of all a bit off track, and then things start to coalesce. I don’t necessarily want what Kim and Juliana are doing to go to together with the dance,\u201d he says. \u201cBut each time the dance\u00a0coincides with the live performance of the spoken text, it’s a different response. It’s really interesting to watch the audience\u2013they’re a bit nervous about what’s going on, and \u201chas it started, has it finished, what am I looking at?\u201d
\nFrieze 2014 of course featured many performances \u2013 both commissioned by Frieze itself, or staged by private galleries. Here performance runs the danger of slippage into theatricality or spectacle, in line with Acconci\u2019s warnings about \u201cperforming\u201d to an audience. Mauss is concerned with wider questions of collecting, archiving and presenting performance.
\n\u201cThe commercialisation or spectacularisation of performance is of course present.\u201d He hopes that these concerns will be addressed, and that performance doesn’t just become entertainment. This concern also determined the structure of \u201c1nversions1\u201d, there would be pauses in which little happened. \u201cPeople would react. On the first day, someone walked in and said \u201cWHERE’S THE DANCE? I WANT TO SEE DANCE NOW! I EXPECTED IT!\u201d Sorry, you can’t say<\/i>\u00a0that, look, this is the boredom in your own<\/i>\u00a0life and you’re going to have to deal with that,\u201c Mauss notes drily. Despite \u201cnever having thought of putting something like this on stage,\u201d Mauss is thinking of taking project further \u2013 just not necessarily in such a commercial context.
\nText von\u00a0Jeni Fulton<\/a><\/strong> \nCheck out more from\u00a0unsere Print-Ausgaben<\/a>\u00a0 und\u00a0<\/strong>about\u00a0Sleek 44<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"