Collective Exhibition for a Single Body—The Private Score

Collective Exhibition for a Single Body is traveling to Bucharest. It is to be the fourth activation of this exhibition and performance project, which Pierre Bal-Blanc realized for the first time in 2017 as part of documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. The Kontakt Collection subsequently initiated a second version of this project entitled Collective Exhibition for a Single Body—The Private Score. Since 2019, this version has been realized multiple times with project partners in Vienna (Austria), Leuven (Belgium), Paris (France), and Lisbon (Portugal). As with its previous iterations, the Bucharest activation focuses on artistic gestures that arose in Eastern Europe during the 1960s and ’70s and resurface in various works held by the Kontakt Collection. These works include pieces by key figures of the Romanian neo-avant-garde. Moreover, works by artists of the 1989 generation who reinvoked the emancipatory potential of their predecessors are likewise featured.

In Bucharest, the artworks’ activation will take place in the European Wing of The National Museum of Art of Romania. This venue offers the perfect environment in which to put the Eastern European neo-avant-garde in contact with Western European schools of painting from Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, and France.

To extend this dialogue between the cultural legacies of the former West and former East, an exhibition of artworks from the Kontakt Collection and other lenders will be shown concurrently at the Omnia Hall. These works represent the starting point for the gestures that will be performed at The National Museum of Art of Romania. The Omnia Hall (Sala Omnia) is part of the former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party that then became the Romanian Senate’s post-1989 home and is now to become the principal venue of the National Center for Dance Bucharest.

With works by Milan Adamčiak, Brynjar Åbel Bandlien, Geta Brătescu, Anna Daučíková, VALIE EXPORT, Stano Filko, Tomislav Gotovac, Ion Grigorescu, Sanja Iveković, Anna Jermolaewa, Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, Katalin Ladik, Simon Leung, Karel Miler, Paul Neagu, Manuel Pelmuş, Petr Štembera, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, Slaven Tolj, and Goran Trbuljak

Curated by Pierre Bal-Blanc.
Choreographed by Manuel Pelmuş.

Performances by Jack Hauser, Maria Mora, Nanci/Cristian Nanculescu, and Adriano Vicente.

Wednesday–Sunday, 2–6pm
Opening: September 13, 2023, 6–8pm, Omnia Hall (both venues are open from 2pm)
Opening performance with a piano recital at 7pm.

Pluie, 2023
A score written by Pierre Bal-Blanc. After George Enescu, Mános Hadjidákis, Ianis Tsarouchis and Milan Adamčiak.

Choreographed together with Manuel Pelmuş, performed by Iulian Neculache.

Inspired by the eponymous art song “Pluie” (Rain), composed by George Enescu in 1915, the music describes a near-pristine landscape after the rain, without any trouble, with just the pointless musical notes of the last drops.