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Simple Men Dance


Intervention & Casting

The dance casting Simple Men Dance was held on 3 September 2011 during the exhibition I can't stand the quiet! by Annja Krautgasser, at the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum. The exhibition was held as part of the RLB Art Prize 2010.
www.simple-men-dance.net

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© Documentation, casting Simple Men Dance.
Photo: WEST.Fotostudio


The Simple Men Dance intervention was based on the dance scene in the film Simple Men (Hal Hartley, USA 1995), where, out of frustration and boredom, three of the film's protagonists dance together to the song Kool Thing by Sonic Youth in an empty fish restaurant on Long Island.

This dance scene is a direct allusion, in formal terms too, to the well-known dance scene from Bande à Part (engl. Band of Outsiders, Jean-Luc Godard, France 1964), which, for its part, made film history.

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© Exhibition view: I can't stand the quiet!, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum,
Innsbruck, 2011. Photo: WEST.Fotostudio

The dance sequence from Simple Men was performed during the castings at the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (ArtBox) by amateur performers and dancers. Anybody who enjoyed dancing was welcome to participate.

The casting was adjudicated by a three-person jury (Stefan Bidner, Günther Dankl, Silvia Höller). The winning team, with the best overall performance, was invited to perform the dance at the opening of the exhibition I can't stand the quiet!.

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© Simple Men Dance Nr.9, 120 x 80 cm, 2011. Photo: WEST.Fotostudio


"With the sketch-like and yet painstaking reconstruction of the film set for an empty fish restaurant in an exhibition space, Krautgasser operates like an archaeologist, opening up the composite elements of the space to aesthetic experience. The display has its performance, and invites visitors to appropriate it." (Gabriele Mackert)


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© Video still: Simple Men (Hal Hartley, USA 1992)
www.youtube-nocookie.com/watch?v=5R3OB_j7IlA


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© Video still: Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
www.youtube-nocookie.com/watch?v=I6pOXjQLh7Y&hl=de





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Exhibition:
I can't stand the quiet! Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2011

No: 11-004 11-007


I can't stand the quiet!


Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck
16.09. - 30.10.2011

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© Installation view: I can't stand the quiet!, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2011. Photo: WEST.Fotostudio

In the exhibition I can't stand the quiet! Annja Krautgasser operates as a director, as an actor and as an artist, not only opening-up and breaking the dominant boundaries of genre between film, video, Fine Art and performance, but simultaneously making a deep contribution in this context: challenging the standard museum space as a purely elite showspace and going beyond the classical art public to make it genuinely accessible to a broad spectrum of individuals.
(Günther Dankl)

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© Exhibition view: I can't stand the quiet!, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2011. Photo: WEST.Fotostudio


Eröffnungsrede von Gabriele Mackert


15.09.2011, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum
(excerpt)

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© Exhibition view: I can't stand the quiet!, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2011. Photo: WEST.Fotostudio

The paradox intrinsic to all documentary film footage that can no longer be posited in the space without reflecting on the shortcomings of its own alleged objectivity — at least not in an art context — marks a turning point within Krautgasser's artistic development. A development that has been heading in the direction of installation for a while, e.g. when she invited residents from different communities in Styria to present themselves before the camera for one minute.

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© Exhibition view: I can't stand the quiet!, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2011. photo: WEST.Fotostudio

For Le Madison — to be seen in the upper of the two exhibition spaces — Krautgasser found protagonists in Amsterdam who were prepared to perform the dance scene from Jean-Luc Godard's film Bande à Part (1964) via email newsletters, adverts and media coverage. The 40 participants had the opportunity to study the steps for the Madison line dance online at a time when there was a great deal of hype surrounding dance on television. The Madison is performed in a series of quick steps that repeat every 16 to 72 steps, according to level of difficulty. The participants practiced at home, on their own. The collective performance was a kind of spontaneous experiment. The performers had probably never met before, and they danced 'with each other' while retaining a certain distance from one another. It was the group dancing together most of the time. As individuals, they did not have much of an idea of the overall picture.

…under the conditions of a professional film set, Krautgasser also not only documented the dance routine, but also shows an interest for the building of the set, the composition of the crew and of the audience. The exhibition space, the design of the graphics in the space, the dancers, the artists and the camera operators were all included in the choreography. With this, Krautgasser exploded the dimensions of the filmic original. Because she observes not only the dance but also its organisation she makes a reflective set of the performance. The art space chosen and left unaltered in a readymade-based approach heightens this effect with its radical exhibition design as an irritation. The clinical sterility of this laboratory atmosphere intensifies the association [with an] "experimental arrangement".

Dance, which always also conveys social emotion and individual aesthetics, impacts on this formalistic stage as if it was literally presumptuous. The modular system of the dance routine encounters the given symmetrical structure of the hall. Accordingly, the intervention alludes explicitly to Krautgasser's interest in rational, minimal arrangements in series, her sense of systematisation, for the relationship to the architecture and to the definition of space, but also to (artificially created) social communities.

Krautgassers project Simple Men Dance is a deconstructed tribute to Jean-Luc Godard's original dance scene, as with Le Madison: for her exhibition at the Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum Innsbruck, Krautgasser reconstructs a glass showcase, a shelf, a bar, a lettering board and an aquarium. She bought a conspicuous original illuminated beer ad at an auction: all items to be seen in the film set for the fish restaurant in the film Simple Men (1992), where Hal Hartley has three of the protagonsits dance to Kool Thing by Sonic Youth. The title for Krautgasser's exhibition is taken from Martin Donovan's cry I can't stand the quiet! in Hartley's film.

With the sketch-like and yet precise reconstruction of the empty fish restaurant film set in an exhibition space, and like an archaeologist, Krautgasser exposes the physical components of the aesthetic experience. The display is an element of the performance, inviting the audience to occupy it. Unlike the original Le Madison, she rejects the moving image. Only one photograph documents the scenery for the dance competition she initiated.

Although Krautgasser did still leave a stage within her installation for the visitors, complete with denoted areas for changing facilities, styling tables and position markings. Their dance could begin, literally in the here and now…
(Gabriele Mackert, freelance curator)


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© Exhibition view: I can't stand the quiet!, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2011. Photo: WEST.Fotostudio

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