beyond the gaze: the audience, implicated

Tino Sehgal, This Progress

In the piece… visitors were ushered up the spiral ramp by a series of guides — first a child, then a teenager, then an adult and finally an older person — who asked them questions related to the idea of progress.

Over the course of several hours-long shifts a week for the six-week run of the show, each of these guides, or “interpreters” as Mr. Sehgal calls them, spent a few minutes walking and talking with one or more visitors at a time, then moved on to the next. (Alicia Desantis, The New York Times)

THE INTERPRETERS

“This kind of conversation usually only happens when two people are drunk or something, or on the subway,” said Rafay Rashid, 20, a freshman at the State University of New York, Purchase. “There are great things in this world and one of them is talking to people, especially strangers. Rarely do you make eye contact with someone and try to figure out where they’re coming from.” (Alicia Desantis, The New York Times) 

At one point Betsy Carroll, 20, a junior at Columbia University, found herself refereeing a lovers’ quarrel. She had asked a couple “Do you learn from your mistakes?” The man said yes. His companion, a woman, rather vehemently disagreed.

“She had a lot of anger about that,” Ms. Carroll recalled. “She chose this moment to bring it up.” (Alicia Desantis, The New York Times)

“One of the interpreters [at a post-closing event] was distributing copies of a sheet titled “What I Heard in ‘This Progress.’ ” The things the interpreters heard: “that there is good progress and bad progress,” “that South Koreans are early adopters,” “that salamanders change colors for sexual reasons,” “that schools today no longer teach cursive writing,” “that the smaller the diamond, the better the marriage,” “that Mr. Hitler ruined my childhood,” “that if I could time-travel I would go back to college and try to fix the thing I don’t want to talk about,” “that she is the masochist in our relationship,” “that everyone in my family except me has seen a ghost.” The conversation spanned generations and continents, Johnny Weir, Seneca, Dante, Chatroulette, Foucault. For a non-interpreter, contemplating it elicited a sort of retroactive cocktail-party anxiety, and also awe at the interestingness of her fellow-citizens.” (Lauren Collins, The New Yorker)

About the Artists

Marina Abramovic (born 1946, Yugoslavia) is a pioneer in the medium of performance art, often testing the limits of her body and mind in her pieces. She has shown her work in major exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at which The Artist is Present was performed. She currently resides and works in New York.  
(Source: Sean Kelly Gallery) 

Vito Acconci (born 1950, New York) was an early pioneer in conceptual, body, and performance art, but has shifted his focus to architecturally based works since the 1980s with the founding of the Acconci Studio. His work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Bienniale, as well as solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad, including at the Museum of Modern Art, NY and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. He currently lives and works in New York.
(Source: Electronic Arts Intermix)

Tino Sehgal (born 1976, London) is a British artist best known for his performance pieces in which he challenges conventional notions of art and the audience by creating works based on social interaction. He has had solo shows at the Guggenheim, NY as well as at other institutions internationally. He currently lives and works in Berlin.
(Source: Guggenheim Museum)

Stephen Willats (born 1943, London) is an artist who works at the intersection of art and the fields of cybernetics and systems thinking, investigating social relationships through interaction. He lives and works in London.
(Source: Victoria Miro) 

Pat Ward Williams (born 1948, Philadelphia) is an African-American artist who works in photography, often combining her photographs with mixed media materials. Her focus of inquiry is African-American race and gender identity. 
(Source: University of Michigan Women’s Studies Dept.)

Wochenklausur (founded 1993) is a Vienna-based artist collective that seeks to address and correct social problems through their works. Other than the pieces selected for this exhibition, their works have also addressed voter rights, homelessness, and labor policy among other topics. They have shown at the Venice Bienniale, among other major international exhibitions.
(Source: CreativeTime Summit)