An Artist Talk by Constanze Ruhm
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
5:30 pm
Room 102
Frederic Lasserre Building, UBC
6333 Memorial Road
I mean you rehearse how to be someone else, and then you try to rehearse being the one who was first learning how to be someone else.
—The character of Bree in X Characters / Re(HERS)al, 2004
The subject of rehearsal as one of the key motives of the productions belonging to the project series X Characters (2001–2013) will be at the centre of this talk. Films and installations such as X Characters / Re(HERS)al (2004), X Love Scenes (2007), My_Never_Ending_Burial_Plot (2010) and Cold Rehearsal (2013, in collaboration with Christine Lang) render always new constellations of rehearsals, castings and similar self-reflective filmic and narrative devices, therefore illuminating the function of “rehearsal” as a contemporary methodology and critical tool, a “practice between the fields of fine arts, film, theatre, theory, and politics,” as the title of the recently released publication PUTTING REHEARSALS TO THE TEST (together with Sabeth Buchmann and Ilse Lafer) suggests.* In an attempt to encompass the wide range of the notion of rehearsal, the talk will link my artistic practice to theoretical explorations of this topic.
*PUTTING REHEARSALS TO THE TEST. Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory and Politics. Eds. Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm. Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vol. 19 / Sternberg Press 2016.
Constanze Ruhm is an artist, filmmaker, author and curator living between Vienna, Berlin and Paris. Since 2006 she has been Professor for Art and Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Austria). Her most recent curatorial project is Putting Rehearsals to the Test (with Sabeth Buchmann and Ilse Lafer), at VOX Centre pour l’art contemporain / Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery / SBC Gallery in Montréal. Her installations and films are exhibited and screened internationally. Since 2013 she collaborates with French filmmaker Emilien Awada (Panoramis Paramount Paranormal, 2014–2015; Replay / Reply: ANNA, ongoing), with whom she founded the artist collective OUT 1 in 2015.
The Distinguished Visiting Artist Program is made possible by the generous support of the Rennie Collection.
Event is free and open to the public.
Poster image: from the film X Love Scenes, 2007 (Photograph: Christoph Fuchs)
