UBS Openings: Characters, Figures and Signs

This unique two-day event takes the alternately spoken and movement-based form of the choreographic 'lecture-demonstration' as its' starting point, and presents contemporary dance in dialogue with visual art and discussion. Taking place on a boat on the river Thames, in the Turbine Hall and in the Starr Auditorium at Tate Modern, the programme explores a number of ways in which verbal and gestural languages intersect, staging tensions between language and meaning in a deliberately unresolved manner.

This unique cross-disciplinary event features Jérôme Bel, Julien Bismuth, Pablo Bronstein, Bojana Cvejic, Guillaume Désanges, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Martin Hargreaves, Florian Hecker, Jennifer Lacey, Xavier Le Roy, Robert Morris, Tino Sehgal, Marten Spanberg, Catherine Sullivan, and Ian White. Whilst verbal language is typically seen as a system of communication in which direct meaning is created through discrete relationships between signifier and signified, gesture (and, often, dance) is commonly understood as being 'outside' language: functioning at the level of the image and therefore constituting a "pure mediality" (Giorgio Agamben). Through their interventions and experimental presentations, the artists, curators and choreographers in the programme address notions of 'saying' and 'doing' as distinct forms of signification, challenging the idea that the former is descriptive, the latter, effective. The resulting 'choreographies' propose new cultural forms and imagine ne w modes of communication and participation.

UBS Openings: Saturday Live
Characters, Figures and Signs

Künstler: Jerome Bel, Julien Bismuth, Pablo Bronstein, Bojana Cvejic, Guillaume Desanges, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Martin Hargreaves, Florian Hecker, Jennifer Lacey, Xavier Le Roy, Robert Morris, Tino Sehgal, Marten Spanberg, Catherine Sullivan, Ian White