Made in New York Media Center by IFP
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43 Questions: A Conversation on Dance Media in Fine Art
with Andrea Haenggi
The evening opens with the 43 QUESTIONS and a “compiled projection” of 10 one minute media clips of works created by artists who’s work are situated in the arena of fine arts but use dance and gestures in their work. Facilitator and Provocateur Andrea Haenggi invites contemporary artist Seline Baumgartner and interdisciplinary artist Orit Ben-Shitrit to open up the conversations with the intent to become a lively dialogue through audience participation. The questions are addressing process, references, inspirations, techniques of the artist works to find new insights and possibilities to push forward what does it mean to film dance, to film movement and people moving.
*The 43 QUESTIONS is a reference of Maya Deren’s first experimental film Meshes in the Afternoon (1943), with its “poetic psychodrama” bearing the impression of art cinema
Andrea Haenggi
Swiss born Andrea Haenggi is a Multidisciplinary Dance Artist, Choreographer, Director and Performer living and working in New York City. Her interests concern dance, visual art, choreography and life in the digital age as the possibility to make things happen beyond the idea of production. A theme that goes through all of Haenggi’s work is that each idea and artistic strategy finds the specific medium, format and site to best express it and often becomes a participatory engaged work.
Haenggi has been active on stage and in situ as performer and creator since ’94, and, since ’98, has created her own choreographic works under the name AMDaT (Dance art Technology), including the visual design and artwork. Notable works include: al +one in a room (‘98), a duet for a dancer and herself moving in a film; cradle rocking in quicksand (2000), for six female performers with six motorized “torso” oil paintings; Friction (‘06), a non-narrative cinematic stage work with 8 dancers, live and prerecorded film feeds. From 2010-2012 she initiated public performance interventions under the name Direct Action Flâneurs. One of her latest projects, 1067 PacificPeople (2013-18), is a place in Brooklyn for live-interactions to search for the value and diversity of the “body”.
Haenggi is a DTW Digital Fellow and received the Swiss Canton Solothurn Dance Award (2008). Her work has been presented internationally in prestigious venues including Dance Theater Workshop, Mass MoCA and The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. She teaches as a Certified Movement Analyst at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in NYC.
Orit Ben-Shitrit is a Moroccan-Israeli interdisciplinary artist educated in New York and showing internationally. Orit works in photography, video and choreography. She has been utilizing movement and bodies to address issues of domination and the potential for violence. These issues developed through three main topical themes: cycles of violence in the Middle East, invisible mechanisms of political, religious and economic control; and conflicted beings trapped in bodies. The works span a spectrum of historical references, combined with ideas that relate to co-dependency, inner demons and behavioral disorders in texture-rich imagery.
Orit has recently shown at MACRO Museo d’arte contemporanea Roma; the Haifa Museum of Art; the Royal College of Art, London; Videobrasil in São Paulo; Anna Kustera Gallery, NY; as well as in: Germany, Russia, Slovenia, Spain and the US. Recent commissions include HALF TAMED BEAST by Artis at Zoom contemporary art from the Middle-East in 2010, a performance commission by ISCP in 2012, and a film commission by EMPAC in 2013-2014. Ben-Shitrit is a recent LMCC Swing Space resident, and a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Film/Video. She is based in Brooklyn.
Seline Baumgartner is a New York-based artist born in Zurich, Switzerland. Baumgartner uses video, sound installations, and sculptures to carefully observe the patterns and grammar of individuality and group dynamics. Baumgartner’s solo exhibitions include
“One and Others” Kunst 11 Zürich, with Gallery SCHAU ORT, Christiane Büntgen, Zurich, Switzerland (2011);
Not Yet, Gallery SCHAU ORT, Christiane Büntgen, Zurich, Switzerland (2010); and
Trial 1-3, Final Fish, Videotank, Zurich, Switzerland (2010). Group exhibitions include
The Movement, Kolumba Kunstmuseum des Erzbistums Cologne, Germany (2013);
Alternativa, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland (2013); and
What Happened 2081, Goethe Institute, New Delhi, India (2013).
Baumgartner received the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim-Foundation Prize (2014), the Dance Movie Commission from Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (2014), the LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) Workspace residency (2013-2014), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Residency (2014) and residencies from Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, New Delhi, India (2011-2012) and City of Zurich, Switzerland, New York (2009-2010). Baumgartner’s work is included in the Goetz collection Munich, Germany, Collection Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland and Collection Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland
