February 3, 2023, 6pm
For over 50 years, William Forsythe has influenced the perception of choreographic practice through his visionary concepts and productions. The award-winning US choreographer is now transferring his extensive archive to the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, which will ensure the long-term preservation of the audiovisual media and documents and make them accessible to the public.
William Forsythe (b. 1949, New York) has been active in the field of choreography for over 50 years. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st-century art form. Forsythe’s deep interest in the fundamental principles of organization of choreography has led him to produce a wide range of projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation.
The ZKM and William Forsythe’s work is linked by their interdisciplinary experimental practice that encompasses all artistic formats. Thus, the CD-ROM William Forsythe: Improvisation Technologies. A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye developed by William Forsythe with the ZKM in 1999 was groundbreaking for its exploration and transmission of choreographic concepts via digital media. The transfer of William Forsythe’s archive to the ZKM builds on these joint artistic collaborations and opens the way forward to a new long-term perspective for scholarly and arts-based research.
The holdings of the archive cover William Forsythe’s creative period since the 1970s in its entirety: from his time at the Stuttgart Ballet beginning in 1976, at the Ballet Frankfurt (1984–2004), and The Forsythe Company (2005–2015) to the present. It contains an extensive collection of archival video recordings of rehearsals, performances and installations, as well as programs, posters, reviews, photographs, publications, correspondence, awards, and other documents. In the long term, William Forsythe’s personal production notes will also be added to the archive.
By handing over the archive to the ZKM and making it available to the public and researchers, there is now the opportunity to explore Forsythe’s revolutionary collective collaborations rendering it useful for future artistic research.
The long-term preservation of the valuable video holdings of the William Forsythe Archive is ensured by the ZKM’s proven expertise in the field of audiovisual media as well as by the acclaimed work of the ZKM’s Laboratory for Antiquated Video Systems.
On the occasion of the archive transmission, the ZKM will present the panel discussion The Performative Archive: William Forsythe in conversation with Peter Weibel on February 3, 2023.
Weibel and Forsythe will discuss an artistic practice that encompasses choreography and performance as well as music, visual art, and poetry, the significance of the project Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye both for Forsythe and the ZKM, and also what challenges media archives pose for memory institutions, how art institutions should react to the “performative turn,” and what effect archives can have today not only on academia but also on artistic practice.
The event will end with a screening of selected film and video footage from William Forsythe’s work since the 1970s. Afterwards, the ZKM invites visitors to refreshments and a get-together.
Panelists: William Forsythe, Peter Weibel
Moderation: Margit Rosen
Project team ZKM: Margit Rosen, Felix Mittelberger
