Output details

Lumps of Rock Zooming Around 1 Performance: “Be realistic! How can lumps of rocks zooming around in space affect our lives down here?” 2012, 25 mins, including cast and contributions of 3 performers, 30 children, a military psychologist, 1 primatologist, co-produced with Michele Sereda. Two videos: Tree, Dur: 5mins, 2012 (produced by Kunstmuseum Thun): Cave, Dur: 5mins, 2012 produced by Kunstmuseum Thun, filmed in the Beatus Caves, Thun Switzerland

The performance and subsequent video installation ‘Lumps of Rock Zooming Around’, 2012, explores the representation of human behaviour in situations of existential danger. Originating in archival research at the Swiss Radio Archive and film archives at Basel Zoo, the research located recordings and films of people and primates (gorillas) in flight. This material was used to draft performance actions emphasising movements of retreat and escape. The process was further informed by interviews conducted with primatologist Prof Klaus Zuberbühler (University of Neuchatel) about primate communication in situations of danger and attack; and with Swiss military commander, Colonel General Haldimann, with reference to psychological training of Swiss soldiers in advance of combat action.The work was then developed through a publicly conducted performance workshop with a group of 30 Swiss primary school children (age 9-10) and their teachers, rehearsing group actions, resulting in a performance event involving the children, professional actor (Michele Sereda), live sound mix, videos and curated exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Thun. The intention was that the performance should be staged in the format of a rehearsal, whereby the actors rehearse movement sequences in changing variations. The tableaux vivants created in this manner elude narrative logic and appear as loops, ellipses, and fragments in a montage. The resulting video installation was exhibited as an installation at Kunstmuseum Thun, including the performance set and three video works. Commissioned as part of a research project in collaboration with the Zurich University for the Arts, as part of the New Social Sculptures series at Kunstmuseum Thun, which examined the redefinition of Social Sculpture as proposed by Joseph Beuys and Bazon Brock in 1970. The commissions also included Jeanne van Heeswijk and San Keller and explored potential of art as a functional device to forge new critical modes of working with museum audiences.