Restagings No. 2: Of Serra (to movement) 2018
Choreography: Abigail Levine
Sound Design: Paula Matthusen
Performance: Abigail Levine, Maho Ogawa, and Vitche-Boul Ra
Fridman Gallery, NYC & Vox Populi, Philadelphia, curated by Tina Plokarz
"Fascinating... an honest and consequent piece that among many things enacts a reclamation of 1960s sculptural objecthood and materiality for dance and its discontents today."
Richard Serra’s Prop Pieces enact a moment in time. Steel plates and rods balance precariously against each other between wall and floor. Hal Foster reads the Props as an endpoint, the successful struggle “of rising up and remaining up.” There is another possibility, however, that the Props represent a starting point, the moment a figure acquiesces, releasing itself to the effects of gravity. Abigail Levine's Restagings No. 2: Of Serra (to movement) takes up this invitation of the Props—that they could slowly give way to gravity, that if we watched long enough, they would come to look more like Serra’s yet earlier works, made of rubber and leather, hanging and bending somewhere between submission and resistance to the forces acting upon them.
Of Serra is the second work in Levine’s Restagings, a multi-work series that reads visual artworks as scores for performance. Restagings work from an iconic cadre of 1960s artists—Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, and Walter de Maria—all of whom were closely associated with dance and performance artists of their era.
Credits
Of Serra (to movement) was supported by a project grant from New Music USA and a grant from Wesleyan University. Residency support provided by Cento Mexicano de la Música y Artes Sonoras (CMMAS) and the Center for Performance Research (CPR). Additional support provided by the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI).
photos by Rebecca Centeno and Rix Chan