Das Museum als USEum
56. Jahrgang
" A gentle experiment betweenthe everyday and the event"
Alix Eynaudi im Gespräch überPerformance und Experimentierräumeim Museum
It is late 2020 and Vienna is in its secondCorona- lockdown. The museum
is closed, there are hardly any peoplein the halls and rooms. How come youare here?
I use the museum spaces to work on theperformance project Noa& Snow. Collab-oration with the museum started in 2017.We got in contact via a project with theTextile Collection. We worked with leatherand created a dress to use as vitrine, as anexhibition space for different types of tex-tile manipulations. The main pattern of thedress was inspired by a dress by Emilie Flögein the museum's collections. Together withcurator Kathrin Pallestrang we organiseda public event in collaboration with Tanz-quartier, which functioned as a pre- per-formance for the piece Edelweiss thatpremiered at the Volkskundemuseum Wien.This was the premise of working together.In 2019 I was granted a PEEK funding( Pro-gramm zur Entwicklung und Erschließungder Künste des Fonds zur Förderung derwissenschaftlichen Forschung, ein Spezial-programm zur Förderung künstlerischerForschung) for my project Noa& Snowwhich led to a close collaboration betweenHerbert Justnik and me, as the project hasits residency at the museum. I like the wordresidency because it speaks of the intimacyof the house, an extension of the domesticspace. And Noa& Snow wants to test theborders between what is an event and whatis the everyday, the ordinary.
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What exactly happens at Noa& Snow?The project is a free series of events, ofperformances. Its center piece is thewriting studio. We propose a choreographicevent: we are testing the elasticity of whatone thinks of when pronouncing choreo-graphy, and we create a place where peopleare invited to write. We included the publicin the work itself by crafting notebooks forthe audience, designing them with collages.We prepared these objects which are alldifferent, and the audience is invited totake one of them, sit down and write. Theycan take the notebooks home. So whateverthey write or draw, whatever happens in theroom is brought back home and continuedto be used.
There is a rupture between the event andthe ordinary, between art and everydaylife. And the border is crossed by the toolsthe audience uses. They receive note-books as a piece of poetry or a poeticobject where they can write down theirshopping lists, poems or whatever theymay think of. The juncture is that by takingone of the notebooks they are alreadybecoming part of that ambivalence youfocus on in your project.
Exactly. This lies in the act of choosing thenotebook they want. So there is already apreference, a thought process that is putin place. It creates a specific engagementtowards what is going to happen. There isan aesthetic choice to be made. In the toolswe are using or in the way we are craftingwhatever we are doing, be it the dance, thecostumes or the music, emphasis is givento the fact that the aesthetic is a politicalthing. All these choices are sophisticatedin the sense that they have been thoughtabout and juxtaposed, adjacent. This is alsothe moment where I can join the general