Media Façade in coproduction with Bolzano Danza

Laâbissi’s choreographic piece has a historic origin: the well-known, if short, 32-minute film, Hexentanz (Witch’s Dance, 1927) by Mary Wigman. Here, the choreographer patiently and coldly decomposes the subversive dance of this eerie female figure and beacon of expressionist German dance by playing it in slow motion.

The video Silent also presents a ‘marginalised’ figure head-on: the queer singer, Aérea Negrot. The aesthetic is that of a pop video as Negrot sports bleached hair and low-cut glitter fashionwear while she performs a conceptual score by John Cage (4’33 in 1952) . The score stops the musicians playing at the exact times indicated. The performance was staged in Oranienplatz, a public square in Berlin, popular with refugees for demonstrations and sit-ins. In Boudry/Lorenz’s work, silence emerges as a violent experience: “being reduced to silence” and “having no voice” are themes presented by the artists as a powerful act of performative resistance. So, both Laâbisi and Boudry/Lorenz examine the methods of words and visibility through marginal or “toxic” figures. Combining the spectacular space of the media facade and the “covered square” of the Museion Passage, Witches gestures presents slow motion movements and silence to focus on withdrawal as an action of commitment and resistance.

For the choreographer Latifa Laâbissi and the artists Renate Lorenz/Pauline Boudry this is a return to Museion. Laâbissi presented Self Portrait Camouflage in 2008 at the opening of the Museion’s new home, whereas Renate Lorenz/Pauline Boudry’s work was displayed at the exhibition curated by Simone Frangi in 2018 entitled “Somatechnics. Transparent travelers and obscure nobodies” (video Telepathic Improvisation, 2017).