CAI YING

Re-Collection by Alexandra Pirici (2018)

Long duration performative exercise
 

“Re-Collection” is a performative exercise that draws on the practice of enactment/embodiment that Alexandra Pirici has been concerned with over time, from works that address public monuments to works in the gallery space such as “Public Collection”, “Delicate Instruments of Engagement” or “Aggregate” – the last one developed for the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin and curated by Raluca Voinea, a performative environment that “reflects” back to the audience embodied memories of relevant aspects of nature, culture and life on earth, from artworks to iconic images, up to extinct bird songs or a practice of intercession.

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Involving local performers (from the place where it is meant to be installed), the action explores the possibility of a collectively assembled, small collection of such embodied memories of human and more-than-human presence on the planet. According to a set of parameters that become an algorithmic framework, the participants chose and construct together with the artist the elements of the collection that can potentially manifest within their bodies, while also deciding and negotiating amongst themselves how to “display” them, in what configurations, chronologies and arrangements.

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The performative exercise remediates, materialises, repeats, hybridises, mutates, amplifies and re-signifies the following natural elements, art-historical references, memories or sensations:

1. Raden Saleh, Forest Fire painting
2. Swarm movement
3. Chun Kai Feng, Totem sculpture
4. Sensing movement specific to cats
5. Volcano: a feeling of a sudden gathering, abruptly changing the landscape and the atmosphere
6. A percussive pulse
7. Ezra Pound poem
8. Moon and moonlight song excerpt
9. Plant life: Bristlecone pine trees, Mangrove trees
10. Animal life: gorillas, tigers, eel colonies, green hornbill birdsong
11. The sound of waves
12. Land reclamation action
13. Guanyin sculpture accompanied by a tiger or a dragon
14. Antonio Canova, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss
15. Bertold Brecht, Questions from a worker who reads
16. Protester holding invisible banner or activist, and artist Seelan Palay performing 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror
17. Suzann Victor, Still Waters
18. Camille Claudel, Sakuntala
19. Nat King Cole, Nature Boy song

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