On October 14, RU artist David Helbich led MFA students from Montclair State University. Following is a blog post originally posted on the art-blog notwhatitis by Stephen Douglass.
Photo credits: Stephen Douglass
INTEGRATION IS AN ACT – Artistic strategies for the performativity of open space.
Conceptual artist David Helbich recently guided students on a walk through Montclair State University. In the public space, a series of aural exercises were carried out to position the participant as both performer and audience at the same time.
Helbich :”For several years, I have been working on different artistic works on the underlying questions of the performativity of public spaces in relation to the public dimension of performative spaces.”
“How far does the communicative and social space of a work of art depend on, and play with, the conditions and rules of public spaces. How far does the incidental togetherness of public space demand performative decisions and behavior? And, how can we play with and within both?”
“I therefore created works like City Tracks, a performative audio guide, with a range of different concepts to send individual audience members to specific locations in cities such as Brussels, Kortrijk, Maastricht, Bergen, Riga (and NYC in the making), where they follow scores and instructions to experience my pieces, the characteristics of the spot, and finally themselves in relation to both.”
“Highly scored moments in a chaotic urban field: a situation.”
“As one result of this constellation the participant becomes the performer and the audience at the same time. The site becomes the instrument and the stage; the passerby the extra and the spectator.”
“In order to trigger the dialectics between control and freedom – to follow an exact score, but to do with it what you want – I understanding an audience as active individuals, agents in an open field. A contradictory field that emerges within arbitrary restrictions.”
“The final decision of each member of an audience is one of involvement, one of resistance and trust. It is the political question of collectivity: in how far can an experience of our daily social ‘choreography’ empowers us, urban inhabitants, to live a life we want? Where is the opening within these spaces, how do we move, how do we use and misuse these spaces?”
David Helbich is a conceptual artist who creates multidisciplinary and experimental works on stage, in print, online and in public spaces. He works as a composer, street photographer, sound and performance artist.
He is interested in the understanding of an audience as active individuals and seeks to open up and enhance experiences in artistically restricted spaces. Notions of guidance and self-performativity are central to his practice where he extends the position of the work.
Helbich (1973 Berlin/Bremen/Brussels) has undertaken numerous urban interventions and performances and created audio guides and score books for a.o. Brussels, New York, Riga, Aarhus, Oslo, Bergen, Kortrijk and Birmingham.
Performing own work and that of other makers all over Europe, his work has featured at events and music festivals such as Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Wien Modern in Vienna, Ultima in Oslo, Borealis in Bergen, Spor in Aarhus.
Recent group exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Art Rotterdam, Argos Art Center, Brussels and Lydgalleriet, Bergen.
He has authored the bestselling photo book and online collection Belgian Solutions and also received the first prize for the composition award ‘ad libitum’ in Stuttgart for his piano book Für aufrichtiges Klavier and realized the album Outcuts on the label Surfacenoise.
In addition to his multidisciplinary work as an artist, he also teaches, always closely based on his own practice at European music, theater and dance academies such as the Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt, p.a.r.t.s. in Brussels, Seads in Salzburg and KASK in Ghent.
David was recently granted a two-year scholarship for artistic development and research by the Brussels-Flemish community and is recently on a 4 month scholarship and residency at Residency Unlimited NYC, supported by Arts & Heritage Flanders. He will be taking part in an exhibition at inCube Arts in Manhattan on the 7th of November and at Union Docs in Williamsburg on the 8th.
Fore more info check out http://davidhelbich.blogspot.com/