KARLSRUHE.- Using the exhibition framework, the ZKM | Karlsruhe presents for the first time the work of internationally renowned, Karlsruhe born choreographer Sasha Waltz. The large-scale, comprehensive presentation “Sasha Waltz. Installations Objects Performances” opened on Friday September 27, with an inclusive performance weekend by Compagnie Sasha Waltz & Guests. Throughout the duration of exhibition, which can be viewed to February 2, 2014, is accompanied by a performance program taking place weekly.

“Sasha Waltz. Installations Objects Performances” offers a unique overview of Sasha Waltz’s work covering the foregoing fifteen years. The exhibition consciously positions her works in the context of fine arts within which Sasha Waltz has always acted as a decidedly multidisciplinary artist.

Comprising the focus of the exhibition are eight large-scale installations: “Vitrine” (video installation from “Körper”, 2000), “Wolke” (performance/ object from “noBody”, 2002), “Pigments” (performance/object from “Impromptus”, 2004), “Gezeiten” (installation from “Gezeiten”, 2005), “Mediterranean Sea” (video installation from “Dido und Aeneas”, 2005), “Fries” (video installation from “Medea”, 2007), “Hängende” (performative installation from “Dialoge 09/MAXXI”, 2009), “Stab” (object from “Sacre”, 2013). These are supplemented by numerous smaller installations and objects, hitherto publically inaccessible documents and archival materials, as well as a comprehensive performance program.

“There are objects in my choreographies, works, which I further elaborate as video installations and, live, several sequences from my pieces that form and capture movement in sculpture. I have sought to select elements situated along this boundary between dance, image, body and installation. In this sense, I have attempted to narrate the objects – such as the water basin from Dido & Aeneas or the glass wall from Körper – as well as in the stage area. My objective was to allow for its volume to be felt, its function, its source. I show the work, in part, with the original music of the pieces, and am keen to discover the extent to which it is also capable of mediating the mood without the dancers”. (Sasha Waltz)

“In the current avant-garde scene there are two converging tendencies: in their conception and practices, fine artists strive from spatial to temporal forms, transform exhibition spaces into stages. In the conception and practice of temporary and spatial forms, performing artists, by contrast, strive away from performance to exhibition. Moving pictures transform themselves into sculptural groups “tableaux vivants”, in installations and back. Sasha Waltz articulates most clearly, and in the most artistically complex of ways, the new phase in the performative turn”. (Peter Weibel)

For considerable time now, the choreographer has been thinking about how to liberate installation and multimedia elements from the stage context and to present the former as independent installations. It was in this connection that the artist and the ZKM met with the aim of developing a very new, innovative format. The ephemeral form of presentation may be viewed for the first time in a permanently viewable situation, namely, transposed in the form of an exhibition situation. An overview of the work, something which performance precludes, was thereby made possible. Representing an innovative step within contemporary art and dance tendencies, this is now to be made known to an international public.

“The ZKM is an incredibly active place. It provides me with the possibility of placing emphasis on a particular aspect of my work which, though present in all pieces, would otherwise remain less perceptible. In dance theater, we work with time that we fill with several intense moments, all of which it is not possible to capture. In Karlsruhe it is possible for me to present several moments, to direct my gaze to those images resembling icons of my pieces by simply cutting out the before and after from the timeline. Dance is an ephemeral art. In the museum we can arrest time. This, I find, is a great opportunity.” (Sasha Waltz)