In her complex live works, Alexandra Pirici often combines performance art, contemporary dance, and sculpture. On the occasion of the exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Pirici interprets Tomas Schmit’s Action without Audience (1965), a piece committed to the gesture of “anti-action,” which marked the artist’s turning away from Fluxus and the increasing self-display of its protagonists. Schmit envisaged that the action would only be performed when no visitors were present, so that the activity performed would remain invisible. The time spent with the audience thus becomes a kind of void, an undefined space of possibility for the exchange between performer and visitor. Pirici takes this radical questioning underpinning the format of the performance as a starting point to formulate questions about presence as well as visible and invisible work and its trace. On four dates, the performer and choreographer Susanne Grau will perform an ongoing action in the exhibition space, the form and content of which will remain unknown. Instead, she presents the potential of a situation that completely eludes the spectacle of performative staging.

Susanne Grau (*1988 in Passau) lives and works in Berlin. She works as a dancer, performer and choreographer. Grau studied contemporary dance at Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Cologne and the postgraduate program Performing Arts Practice and Visual Culture at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In 2015, she received the danceWEB scholarship of the ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna. As a performer she has worked with various choreographers, including May Zarhy, Fabrice Mazliah, Mårten Spångberg, Davis Freeman, Özlem Alkis, Choy Ka Fai, Maayan Danoch, Prue Lang, Juana del Mar Jiménez Infante and Reut Shemesh. She also creates own artistic works and collaborates often with Adriana Gheorghe, Alma Toaspern, Rocio Marano, and Hend Elbalouty.

Alexandra Pirici (*1982 in Bucharest) lives and works in Bucharest. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include: Chicago Architecture Biennale (2019); New Museum, New York (2018); Skulpturprojekte Münster (2017); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2017); 9th Berlin Biennale (2016); Tate Modern, London (2016); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2016); Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg (2014); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2014); 55th Venice Biennale, Romanian Pavilion (2013).