Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Four on the floor

The Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal has a piece being performed in the Venice Biennale. Two people move about on the floor making language-like sounds, grunting or occasionally singing or chanting. It’s not so far away from work performed at St Paul St Gallery in the last Auckland Triennial back when Sehgal was still being billed as a dancer. He has usually insisted that his work is not photographed but the armed (seriously) guard didn’t make any effort to stop people at Venice so maybe he has abandoned the effort. 

Around the corner and another performance started up. Two young women suddenly threw themselves on the floor and started crawling around between visitors. More cameras came out until we all realised that one of them had broken her necklace and they were grappling for the small  scattered beads. Sehgal would have loved it. 
Images: Left Sehgal gets recorded in Venice and right the performance bead search in progress.