Leftovers of Endurance
Installation, 2011
Work that activates and documents a five-month durational performance. Over this period of time, Nina Kurtela establishes a daily practice of visiting and witnessing the changes at the building site of the Uferstudios, Wedding, Berlin – the warehouse for the repair of public trams and buses becomes a dance institution. She is spectator to the making of an institution, an art institution, the making of the theatre stage. The camera acts as a witness to her performing/witnessing. The piece emerges as a case study of an individual subject’s encounter with the radical transformations of social structures and operative models within the performing society. The artist is present at the birth of Berlin’s new contemporary dance centre, an institution that will certainly come to play a part in shaping and organizing the dynamic of the city’s dance community. The work emerges in the force field of a commitment to the daily execution of present-ness in relation to the specific context where this act takes place: the building site of the theatre. What unfolds is a 8-minute work with multi-faceted implications. The body is rendered a statue through the changes of time. The screen becomes the performing skin.
Artist's Bio:
Is currently based in Berlin and Zagreb. In her work she is busy with the cross media field of research and creation between disciplines such as visual and performing arts. Her practice does not exclude any medium and with its conceptual and multidisciplinary approach gives a chance for any means of production to be realized. The work is often multidisciplinary, site-specific, engages particular communities, questions monetary values and explores notions of exchange through which different social relations are established. While examining identity and intimacy she question how can different actions of the body in particular social, cultural and urbanistic sphere determinate the human behavior, influence experience and affect us.