A Choreographed Exhibition / Eine Choreographierte Ausstellung
With Jonah Bokaer, Philipp Egli, Karl Holmqvist, Jennifer Lacey, Roman Ondak, Michael Parsons, and Fia Backstrom & Michael Portnoy. An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland.

‘ A Choreographed Exhibition’ is an exhibition only composed of movements. For over a month and a half, three dancers from the Tanzkompanie Theater St. Gallen are present in the kunsthalle during the opening hours to perform in space the choreography of movements, patterns and choreographed gestures, following the scores and instructions as provided by the invited artists, dancers, and choreographers.

In a space where nothing is present but the dancers, in a the gallery left empty, only the opening hours of the gallery (2pm – 6pm expect Saturdays & Sundays from 1pm – 5pm) and the length of the exhibition (each days between Wednesday and Sunday included from the 1st of December 2007 until the 13th January 2008) gives the time (the rhythm?) to all the pieces. ‘A Choreographed Exhibition’ considers choreography and dance, movements in space and in time, as the gestures become an abstraction of forms choreographed in the space of the Kunsthalle. A succession of movements, where ultimately only the memory of these gestures remain.

In a choreography somehow reminiscent of a 1960s experimental theatre, Fia Backstrom (*4th of March 1957, in Stocksund, Sweden) & Michael Portnoy (*1971, both living in New York) in this unique collaboration create a piece about exchange systems, as two dancers perform intelligible primitive tribal moves and bargain for their lives, engaging several times during the day a series of 5 morphemes deriving from the daily updated live stock market report as read by a third dancers who evolves in space similarly to any share evolve in the stock exchange.

All pieces are performed as the day evolves, yet at any given time the viewers are only confronted to a succession of solo shows, one piece by one artist, as only in the entire time of the day and solely throughout its whole duration is the group exhibition revealed. Similarly to dance & performance, ‘A choreographed exhibition’ is a mode of production that produces no objects, and as such affirms its political standpoint in an oversaturated world. The exhibition considers movements as the means to produce ephemeral art pieces, as the works only exists for the time it takes for the dancers to inscribe them in space. Through their execution in time these pieces generate an exhibition of movements, and thus structure the movements of the exhibition as an ephemeral environment, or in other words, as a choreographed exhibition.

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Photographies by Anna-Tina Eberhard


Kunsthalle St Gallen, Davidstrasse 40, CH-9000 St. Gallen
Open from Wednesday until Sunday: Wed/Thur/Fri: 14-18 ; Sat & Sun: 13-17

‘ A Choreographed Exhibition’ is an exhibition curated by Mathieu Copeland and co produced by the Kunsthalle St Gallen (http://www.k9000.ch/) and La Ferme du Buisson (http://www.lafermedubuisson.com/).