Through Composition as Explanation

2010

Performance work in collaboration with Marcus Doverud, and Ana-Maria Hadji Culea & Amelie Rydqvist

> Staged art performance at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, November 2011.
> Shared at Inter Arts Center, 2014, Malmö, in artistic conference Tacit or Loud, that presented a series of installations and performances bringing choreography, theatre, music and fine arts together
> Shared as practice at Royal Institute of Art, a workshop in October 2010, and at Pontus Hulténs showroom, at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, December 2010.

The project Through Composition as Explanation departed from reading the text ‘Composition as Explanation’ by Gertrude Stein first published in 1926 and since then the work has had several outcomes as performances, workshops and seminars. Throughout the process we have been paying close attention to how knowledge and experience can be accumulated and shared in a group, and further more how this shared understanding can be translated to different media.

The reading practice departs from Stein’s text, combining the reading aloud of that particular text together with other texts and films to better understand, update and discuss some issues that Stein’s text bring about e.g. What is the contemporary?, the interfold of time; past, present and future, the problem of the whole and the part and the whole (unity) of a thing that is itself a part of something etc.

The staged art performance Through Composition as Explanation is a visual and spatial presentation featuring some of the concepts thoroughly discussed in the mentioned reading practice. The knowledge and understanding accumulated was (in)forming a combination of objects, the space in question, human bodies and duration that both comprise, and simultaneously, became subject to composition. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm were a suitable institution for the initial presentation, because of how they own and take care of many classical art pieces. That served greatly as an analogy, bringing an artwork by Picasso on stage, to the ways meaning and value are negotiated over time, discussed in some of its complexity in Stein’s text.

The work Through Composition as Explanation is conducted in collaboration with Marcus Doverud (performer, musician with a degree in aesthetics), Ana-Maria Hadji-Culea (curator, writer), and Amelie Rydqvist (architect, artist). The work is supported by KU fundings from Kungl. Konsthögskolan in Stockholm, and by project support from the City of Stockholm, and Kulturbryggan.

Video Clip from Through Composition as Explanation

Time Based