Alexandra Bachzetsis – REHEARSAL (ONGOING)

Every day is an ongoing rehearsal. Alexandra Bachzetsis presents Rehearsal (Ongoing), the artist’s first individual exhibition at Karma International. An ensemble of works in diverse formats and techniques, it includes live solo performance Perfect (2001, Bachzetsis’s first choreographic work) staged in the setting of the exhibition on two consecutive evenings (September 18 and 19, 6pm) as well as October 30, 6pm.

This Side Up (2007) is a video and free print installation (realized together with graphic designer Julia Born), an attempt to overcome gravity and defy directionality: down is up, left is right and the wall becomes the performer’s floor. The eponymous Rehearsal (Ongoing) (2010) is a two-channel video work: a table becomes a stage for reversible manipulation of everyday objects that sometimes turns out to be irreversible, while the artist methodically documents all stages of the entire process with polaroid camera. An expansive Wall Piece (2021) has been conceived in the process of making of Bachzetsis’s upcoming performance 2020: Obscene. It includes a 25-meter-long and 2-meter-wide roll of dance floor descending from the wall and landing on the floor of the gallery – an enlarged film strip of silkscreened photographs representing the protagonists captured in critical moments of the performance. In Pin-up Corner (2021), a tiny room in the rear of the gallery space is covered all-over with posters that accompanied the performance Soirée (realized in 2008 by Company, a collective Bachzetsis co-founded with light and costume designer Tina Bleuler and DJ Lies Vanborm) – representing a cast of manipulated portraits of female performers who bearing electrifying, culturally charged names, such as “Electra,” or “Daphne”. Another new work is Floor Piece I – IV (2021), a series of cardboard sheets perforated by the dancer’s high-heels during a rehearsal for performance Manual for Desire: “action paintings” that emerged without any manual work involved in the process, executed in a disciplined and irreverent manner.

An Ideal for Living (2018) is a reconfiguration of a body of work created for a show at the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris in 2018. The eponymous two-channel video work features young teenagers (Mia Born and Oleg Houbrechts) wearing headphones and singing songs (while we don’t hear the music they are listening to) and expertly playing football in a room (while we don’t see the ball they are kicking). A single-channel video work A Manual for Desire uses Paul B. Preciado’s poem “Love Is a Drone” (performed as rap song) as instruction material for a sequence of performance acts. A part of the same ensemble, Catapult is made of AirTrack components (airtight training inflatables): a sculpture working against gravity—or humorless weight—of that medium. Ready to be launched from Catapult, a publication An Ideal for Living/A Manual for Desire completes the show. Manuals and ideals are our scores of everyday. They rule over our freedom.

Exhibition date and time:

From: 17/09/2021 to 06/11/2021