In White Horse / Twin Horse, the Brakke Grond’s theatre infrastructure was put to use to rehearse forms of exhibition in which research, process and outcome cannot be meaningfully distinguished.
The artists move their entire physical storage and digital archive to the theatre space and unpack the work into a series of repetitions in collaboration with two curators, a fellow artist and a theatre director. The theatre’s technicians, used to build and unbuild productions every night, reinstall the exhibition every ten days, activating and deactivating different parts. A writer in residence captures each iteration with a text that remains in the space, her writing accumulates as the exhibition transforms. Rehearsing the exhibition allows to question and expose conditions surrounding the production of the artwork and its presentation.
Rehearsal 01
Index / Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen
The first rehearsal proposed liberating the works from their standard exhibition form by creating a new physical index involving work parts, production relics and research memorabilia. On six theatre stages spread throughout the exhibition new constellations took shape, based on associations, recurring themes and processes running through the artists’ practice.
Rehearsal 02
Moonbouncing / Samuel Saelemakers
This second rehearsal considers some of the many specific contexts that produce and inspire the work, only to then eclipse these contexts and disconnect the artworks from them. Using different modes of presentation, Moonbouncing tests the body of work gathered at the exhibition for its resilience and resistance in light of relentless restagings and rehearsals.
Rehearsal 03
Walkthrough / Tyler Coburn
For his rehearsal, Coburn has stripped the exhibition of artworks, storing those that fit in a single room. Why he chose to do this, why the voiles of Avant Tout, Discipline hang like theater curtains, why in one gallery lingers a bestial scent are questions in search of answers.
Rehearsal 04
Dormant Remains / Christina Li
Conceived as a pseudo-forensic experiment, the fourth rehearsal attempted to make tangible the traces of works and material ephemera, accompanied by text fragments, scripts and impressions written for the previous rehearsals and by the writer-in-residence. As an accumulation of all the previous displays, this rehearsal invites visitors to draw their own connections within the entanglement of objects and processes, through which unlikely interpretations and otherwise elusive threads might come to the fore.
Rehearsal 05
To be Continued / Anne Breure
Rehearsing means ‘to try something out before there are spectators’, but also ‘to repeat’. In this rehearsal, which was repeated every hour, the spectator was herself the most important and sole actor. Guided by audio-fragments from interviews with the artists she moved through the rooms and theatre in the role of both spectator and performer. Similar to a video game, she followed a certain trajectory through five scenes that each give an insight into the thinking, making, and working process of the artists.
More information, images and texts on whitehorsetwinhorse.tumblr.com
Photos by Ernst van Deursen
Made possible in collaboration with De Brakke Grond and Z33. With generous support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Mondriaan Fonds.