Neuer Berliner Kunstverein presents the first solo exhibition of Alexandra Pirici in Germany. Conceived as a living environment, the exhibition Aggregate forms the framework for more than 80 performers, who together with the visitors define the exhibition space in a swarm movement. Based on embodied memories that negotiate fragments of the common world heritage, the work referrs to mankind’s attempt to preserve essential aspects of its existence in time capsules, such as NASA’s “Voyager Golden Records”, comprising selected information on life on Earth in order to make it available for other, alien species.

Pirici addresses such an “ark” as a process, in which information is subjectively selected and transformed, fitting into categories such as life forms, sounds from Earth, cultural achievements, scientific techniques and knowledge, but also inanimate objects and the uncategorizable. The chosen elements are redefined in the process of their transmission. In Aggregate, this action emerges in a constant stream of bodies, which includes the visitors of the exhibition; selected common memories belonging to different canons and historical stages emerge and disappear through enactment. In this way, the living environment adapts, multiplies and amplifies individual and collective proposals; instances or images—either canonical or less recognizable—undergo a process of abstraction, of being embodied, digested and produced anew. By hybridizing the one with the many, what is archived and understood as exemplary is revealed as always multiple, as always becoming. The performed selection is distributed in time, throughout the duration of the exhibition, by irregular patterns, emphasizing the randomness and fragmentary access to the personal and collective stack of memory and knowledge.

Aggregate invites us to experience how we define our identity in a collective and how this process is shaped by the selective recollection of memories we would like to save for ourselves in the present and the future. In exploring Pirici’s project, the usual distance between the work of art and the viewer is deconstructed by the mass of the performers occupying the space, stimulating and influencing the movement of the visitors. The art space is questioned and jointly defined. The movement towards the work of art becomes part of the work itself, as the work emerges from movement.

One of the end points of the exhibition and the alternative exit is the yard space, where a few performers are defining a space of loss, opening outside and within the subject. A mysterious song composed by the artist is adding to the archive of the past a note from a potential future, relinquishing the need to hold on to the recognized and to reunite it with the yet unformed.

Full list of references used for the ongoing performative action:

Tigers, gorillas, antelopes

Ocean-floor eels colony

Bird song (the extinct Huia – Heteralocha acutirostris)

Prometheus tree (Bristlecone Pine – Pinus longaeva)

Cave of the Crystals in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico

Sound of waves

Welwitschia mirabilis plant

Skype login sound

Internet infrastructure sounds (data center)

CRISPR - DNA editing technique

“Occupy” movement hand signals

Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa

Wifredo Lam: Lisa Mona

Michelangelo: David

Wooden Bodhisattva from Shanghai

Egyptian Seated Scribes

Bicefalous Ain Ghazal figures from Jordan

Antonio Canova: Psyche Revived by Love’s Kiss

Constantin Brancusi: The Table of Silence

Maria Tanase: song excerpt – Pana cand nu te iubeam [Until I fell in love with you]

Rihanna: song excerpt – Kiss it better

Forough Farrokhzad: poem excerpt – I feel sorry for the garden

Simone Yoyotte: poem excerpt – Pyjama-Speed

Depeche Mode: song excerpt – Enjoy the Silence

Chola bronze statue of Nataraja

Charlotte Rudolph: Hands of Mary Wigman

Kenji Kawai: song excerpt – Making of a Cyborg

Fyodor Lopukhov: ballet still – Bolt

Pablo Neruda: Keeping Quiet

Camille Claudel: Sakountala

Unknown artist, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Sleeping Hermaphroditus

Bollywood film excerpt – Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Ghagra song excerpt

Laurie Anderson: Goodbye/Hello

Gil Scott-Heron: Whitey on the Moon

Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

Corner Aggregate

Intercession names calling

Alexandra Pirici: polyphonic composition for the garden

Alexandra Pirici (b. 1982 in Bucharest) lives and works in Bucharest. Most recently, her projects were shown at, a. o., Berlin Biennale (2016); Tate Modern, London, and Tate Liverpool (2016); Off-Biennale Budapest (2015); Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg (2014); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2014); Venice Biennale (2013). In 2015, she received the Excellence Award of the National Dance Center, Bucharest. This year Alexandra Pirici takes part in Skulptur Projekte Münster.

Performers: Alaa Eita Abdullatif, Caroline Alexander, Anajara Laisa Amarante, Malin Andreasson, Irene Anglada, Anna Aristarkhova, Irem Avci, Sara Axelsson, Maria Baroncea, Julia Barrette, Madeleine Birch, Helena Botto, Jules Boutet, Telmo Branco, Valeria Busdraghi, Martha Hincapié Charry, Ariel Cohen, Senya Corda, Claire Cote, Carmen Coțofană, Philipp Czech, Sandhya Daemgen, Madalina Dan, Livia Delgado, Simone Detig, Viviana Druga, Austin Fagan, Forough Fami, Josephine Findeisen, Judith Förster, Florence Freitag, Marc Gabriel, Juan Felipe Amaya González, Ronja Häring, Martin Hansen, Alice Heyward, Mathea Hoffmann, Jasmin İhraç, Junko Iwahashi, Anna Jarrige, Ayesha Katz, Daniella Kaufmann, Katie Kelly, Kathrin Knöpfle, Miriam Kongstad, Layton Lachman, Laura Leiner, Francesca Lisette, Lola Lustosa, Rolando Matsangos, Rachael Mauney, Jos McKain, Zwoisy Mears-Clarke, Marissa Medal, Janosa Mike, Angela Millano, Reza Mirabi, Isadhora Müller, Negroma, Ania Nowak, Sonia Noya, Lulu Obermayer, Francisco Bejarano Montes de Oca, Yoko Onodera, Birte Opitz, Assi Pakkanen, Julia Plawgo, Dmitriy Povernov, Emily Ranford, Marie Rechsteiner, Paul Riemann, Julia Rodriguez, Stefan Röben, Marc Saad, Kristianne Salcines, Kareth Schaffer, Renae Shadler, Laura Signoriello, Rodolfo Piazza Pfitscher da Silva, Hanna Kritten Tangsoo, Brett Thompson, Melina Torstensson, André Uerba, Lina Valverde, Alexandra Vasilieva, Jeronimo Vignera, Madeleine Rose White, Frida Yngvesson, Tomer Zirkilevich, Patrick Ziza

Artist Talk

Sunday, August 13, 2017, 7 pm

With Kasper König (Artistic Director Skulptur Projekte Münster)