WORKS ON PAPER III: The Shape of Missing Violence

source: vimeo

5-7 participants are invited to perform in “The Shape of Missing Violence.” Each of the participants is required to hold a knife and stay still. They stand in front of a wall within a “frame” which is made of black adhesive tape in rectangle shape. When the performance starts, the artist adjusts their postures and, later, uses the same black adhesive tape to “fill” everything within the frame. Afterwards, the wall and the bodies of the participants are covered with black tapes, while their heads and the knives are still visible; then, their heads are covered with black tape and, finally, the knives are covered as well. Once participants realize that their body is completely covered, they can move slightly, expanding the tapes from “inside” (not destroying them) and come out from the tapes. They leave the knife, which is stuck on the wall, behind the tapes. In the end, the shapes of the leaving traces of their bodies are shown while the knives are invisible.
Isaac Chong Wai is an artist from Hong Kong and MFA candidate in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar. He received his BA in Visual Arts (Hons.) from the Academy of Visual Art at Hong Kong Baptist University. He works with diverse media, including performance, site-specific installation, public art, video, photography and multimedia. His work, “I’m not changing the color of history – The Sarajevo White Roses,” is selected to be shown at Macura Museum in Serbia in 2015. Chong’s work, “I Dated a Guy in Buchenwald,” was selected for the Moscow Biennale for Young Art 2014. His video, “Equilibrium No.8 – Boundaries,” received honorary mention at the Award of the 2nd OZON International Video Art Festival in Katowice, Poland in 2013. He was awarded the first runner-up prize for the 2012 Hong Kong Contemporary Art Award. He participated in IAM (International Art Moves) in Dresden, Germany in 2012. Chong had his solo-exhibition at the Academy of Visual Arts Gallery in Hong Kong in 2011. He lives and works in Berlin.
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source: momentumworldwideorg

For the MPA-B Month of Performance Art Berlin 2015, MOMENTUM reprises its month-long program of Performance Sundays entitled WORKS ON PAPER. WORKS ON PAPER III inverts classic assumptions of paper as a medium, inviting performance artists to approach paper not as a static blank canvas, but as a dynamic source of conceptual and performative possibility. Bringing together a diverse group of international artists based in Berlin, MOMENTUM invites them to work on paper and with paper to activate all the possibilities of the medium in unexpected ways. WORKS ON PAPER III generates a dialogue between performance artists confronted with the challenge of working with paper, and artists whose medium is paper, given the challenge of working with performance, invoking the breadth of performance art to reimagine paper: this most traditional of artistic media.

Taking place every Sunday in May (3, 10, 17, 24 & 31) from 3-6pm, WORKS ON PAPER III takes the form of a cumulative series of performances – with each subsequent performance engaging with the artifacts resulting from the works preceding it in the series. By generating a cumulative, site-specific series through the appropriation of the remains of one another’s performances, the artists in WORKS ON PAPER challenge and reinvigorate the notion of the stationary, disengaged exhibition. What, they ask, is the life of performance after the event concludes? Whether engaging in durational performance, instruction pieces, physical and social architecture, live performance in tandem with other media, sculpture, dance, poetry, or text, these artists challenge expectations of working with the traditional medium of paper in real-time.

Each performance is documented on video, and from 6 June to 5 July 2015, MOMENTUM will exhibit these videos alongside the artifacts in a gallery exhibition.
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source: vimeo

MOMENTUM is a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters in Berlin. Through our program of Exhibitions, Kunst Salons, Public Video Art Initiatives, Residencies, and Collection, we are dedicated to providing a platform for exceptional artists working with time-based practices. The term ‘time-based’ art means very different things today than when it was first coined over 40 years ago. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity ad relevance of time-based practices, always seeking innovative answers to the question, ‘What is time-based art?’. Located in the Kunstquartier Bethanien, Kreuzberg, MOMENTUM redefines conventional gallery practice by acting as a gallery of galleries, collections, and institutions, selectively inviting international artists through their galleries and private collectors to show time-based art. Positioned as a global platform with a vast international network, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. The key ideas driving MOMENTUM are: Collaboration, Exchange, Education, Exploration, and Inspiration.
In addition to our extensive international programme, MOMENTUM plays an active role in the Berlin art community and works with exceptional Berlin-based artists to promote their work internationally. MOMENTUM generates exchange, sharing resources, broadening audiences, and opening up markets by providing links and communications between international networks of artists and institutions. MOMENTUM creates an educational exchange between the general public, cultural institutions, and the art world: through public art initiatives, in fostering the interchange of resources, making the MOMENTUM Collection and video archive of events available online, hosting talks, workshops, and monthly discussions which build new networks and explore new technologies and their impact on art practices. MOMENTUM’s mission is to enable the best quality art from around the world to inspire the greatest number of people, irrespective of cultural, economic, or social difference. Art is for everyone.
MOMENTUM was founded by Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch in 2010 in Sydney, Australia as a major international event bringing together an exhibition program with 6 galleries, 5 curated programs, 6 performances, a micro-residency for local artists, and a symposium of 32 of the world’s leading art professionals, alongside the work of 32 international artists. Maintaining the networks generated by this event, MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in 2011 where programming featured collaborations with leading galleries in Australia, Hong Kong, and New York, while in 2012 renowned artists from China, Poland, America, Australia, Germany, and more, were shown. MOMENTUM runs an Emerging Artists Series to support exceptional Berlin-based artists, and participates in local and international Festivals. Curated group shows are also featured, in addition to screenings on our Public Art Screen, SKYSCREEN, as well as a Kunst Salon event accompanying each exhibition, which bring selected art professionals together to discuss each exhibition and its broader implications. The Kunst Salon discussions are documented on video and made available on our website and social media as an educational resource. The MOMENTUM Collection is also used as an educational resource by several international art schools.