Museum Tinguely, Kaserne Basel, and Kunsthalle Basel are pleased to present:

Performance
Process

An Approach to Swiss Performance Art from 1960 to the Present

PerformanceProcess

An Approach to Swiss Performance Art from 1960 to the Present

20 September 2017 – 18 February 2018

PerformanceProcess was an exceptional institutional collaboration between Kaserne Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, and the Museum Tinguely in partnership with the Centre culturel Suisse Paris, which set out to celebrate both the quality and the diversity of Swiss performance art. Over a period of five months, each of the three Basel-based institutions presented its own special take on the topic.

The project kicked off at the Museum Tinguely in September 2017 with a show called “PerformanceProcess – 60 Years of Performance Art in Switzerland”. That exhibition featuring several live performances (by Yan Duyvendak, Florence Jung, San Keller, La Ribot, Anne Rochat, Roman Signer, and Jean Tinguely among others) addressed the question of how the history of Swiss performance art, which most probably began with Jean Tinguely’s now near legendary performance Homage to New York of 1960, will be told.

Kaserne Basel then took up the baton with “Performing Choreographies”, a week-long programme of performances made in Switzerland that blur the line between performance and choreography. In addition to the events acted out on stage and in the public space by artists as diverse as Foofwa d’Imobilité, Dimitri de Perrot & Julian Sartorius, and Massimo Furlan, Kaserne Basel also gave special prominence to the works of several powerful female voices such as Marie-Caroline Hominal, La Ribot, and Simone Aughterlony.

Just in time for the typically very popular Museums Night, Kunsthalle Basel opened a one-month-long exhibition showcasing a new generation of Swiss artists who have embraced performance as part of their practice. “New Swiss Performance Now” was an exclusively live show that did not include any documentation, scripts, or other relics of past performances. Twenty-four artists and artists’ collectives brought the programme to life with over fifty performances, almost all of which were new. The programme ended a month later with a grand finale at Morgestraich – the “collective performance” that opens the world-famous Basel Fasnacht.

Also part of the project was an exceptionally well-attended two-day symposium at Museum Tinguely and Kunsthalle Basel, at which experts from Basel, Switzerland, and abroad discussed the historical, political, theoretical, and practical aspects of performance art and its heritage.

The whole PerformanceProcess project was flanked by a series of Artist Talks organised by the journalist Dominikus Müller, the transcripts of which are provided here in the middle column. The Centre culturel suisse Paris, moreover, has assembled an online archive of all the works presented as part of PerformanceProcess and this can now be accessed at www.pprocess.ch.

An initiative of the Abteilung Kultur Basel-Stadt, PerformanceProcess made waves both nationally and internationally and attracted over 42,000 visitors.

A collaborative project by Museum Tinguely, Kaserne Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, in partnership with Centre culturel suisse, Paris

Supported by the Division of Cultural Affairs, Canton of Basel-Stadt
The performance program at Kaserne Basel is additionally supported by Pro Helvetia.

Coordination: Eva Heller; Design: Dan Solbach, Ben Brodmann; Code: Daniel Schneider, Prolog; Font: Dinamo
Concept and editing: Museum Tinguely, Kaserne Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, Dominikus Müller, Eva Heller

Video Homepage: Jean Tinguely, Study for an End of the World No. 2, in der Wüste von Nevada, 1962, Filmstill aus „David Brinkley’s Journal“, NBC, 1962

As a digital archive, the site www.pprocess.ch gives an overview of all the artistic projects presented in the frame of PerformanceProcess at Museum Tinguely, at Kaserne Basel and at Kunsthalle Basel in 2017-2018, as well as at Centre culturel suisse in Paris in 2015.

  • Museum Tinguely
  • Kaserne
  • Kanton Basel-Stadt, Kultur
  • centre culturel suisse paris
  • Pro Helvetia

Journal

Artists Talks (in German)

Die Kuratorinnen und Kuratoren im Gespräch


Performancekunst scheint die Kunst der Stunde zu sein. Aber welche Rolle spielt die körperliche Präsenz im digitalen Zeitalter? Und in welcher Beziehung steht Performance zu ihrer Dokumentation und zu den sozialen Medien? Die vier Kuratorinnen und Kuratoren von PerformanceProcess sprechen mit Dominikus Müller über ihre Zusammenarbeit, über die unterschiedlichen Ausrichtungen ihrer Institutionen und darüber, warum Performancekunst so gut in unsere Zeit passt.

Lesen Sie mehr dazu …

#performanceprocess