Artists Space

When Time Becomes Form:
Solidly Grounded

Performance
December 18, 2007, 7pm

Artists Space is pleased to present TBL (TallBlondLadies), a collaborative project between the artists Anna Berndtson (Sweden/Germany) and Irina Runge (Germany). This exhibition marks the third installment of the durational performance series When Time Becomes Form curated by Marina Abramovic. The duo will present Solidly Grounded, a collection of three works, performed over five days for five hours per day, in Artists Space’s main galleries.

Two women in front of a white wall. They are dressed in matching white jackets and short white skirts, and each wear a set of colorful rollerskates. One woman is on her toes with her arms extended behind her, reaching for and pulling the second woman who is leaning forward to grab her hands.
[Two women in front of a white wall. They are dressed in matching white jackets and short white skirts, and each wear a set of colorful rollerskates. One woman is on her toes with her arms extended behind her, reaching for and pulling the second woman who is leaning forward to grab her hands.]

TBL inverts female stereotypes through the composition of absurd and unexpected performative gestures, often incorporating a range of accoutrement from high-end fashion to sports gear. Their works present diametrically opposed concepts; beauty and grace are juxtaposed and diminished through brute action and athleticism, tacitly disrupting and challenging gender-based categorizations. The three pieces to be included, Big Dip, Ascendant Landing, and Potential Fertility Rite, are distinct yet share the recurrent core elements of sound, rhythm, and form embodied through purposeful movement. The symbols of the Celtic knot, the line, and the Lemniscate (eternity sign) provide the foundation for each of their performances, allowing for a poetic exploration of female tropes through notions of timelessness and the everyday.

When Time Becomes Form is an ongoing performance series of long-durational work curated by Marina Abramovic for Artists Space. The performance series grows from Artists Space’s commitment to experimentation across all art forms and recent efforts to return performance art to its central position within the gallery’s activities and exhibitions. The series consists of twelve distinct, but interrelated, durational performances, each created and presented by a different performance artist, each of whom is a member of the Independent Performance Group (IPG). Each of these five-day performances explores and questions issues of concentration, willpower, and determination, and uses the entire gallery space for 8 hours during each days of its presentation. The entire series will develop over the course of the next two and a half years.

Developed in 2003, IPG is an independent artists group founded by Marina Abramovic, the self-described “grandmother of performance art.” IPG’s 42 members hail from 22 different countries and are linked by their shared interest in exploring the boundaries of performance art as well as by their studies with Abramovic. Though varying widely in execution, the performance work created by the members of IPG explores concepts of endurance, concentration, perception, self-control, will power, confrontation, and mental and physical limits.