Algorithm ocean true blood moves
June 29–30, 2024
Hartwig Art Foundation proudly presents the European premiere of Julien Creuzet’s latest performance Algorithm ocean true blood moves in Amsterdam.
After its successful premiere as part of Performa Biennial 2023 in New York, Creuzet’s largest performance piece to date travels to Amsterdam, specifically to the newly opened Studio Boekman of the National Opera and Ballet.
Creuzet, who will represent France at this year’s 60th Venice Biennale, uses choreography, music, and sculpture to explore the collective muscle memory of movements across the Black Atlantic. The steps are inspired by Creuzet’s collection of motions by online content creators of African descent that he has been gathering from social media over the years. In the performance, they reveal unexpected yet intimate connections beyond times and geographies, such as Sudanese clerics’ formal dance moves in squatting positions during a ceremony and American teenagers “duck walking” in the aisles of a supermarket.
Conceived in collaboration with Brazilian choreographer Ana Pi, the performance features dancers from the Alvin Ailey School in New York, performing to the vibrations of “Shatta,” an emergent genre of electronic Caribbean dancehall music from Martinique.
Credits
Algorithm ocean true blood moves is co-commissioned by Performa and Hartwig Art Foundation. With Kamani Abu, Sarah Boyd, Sydnie Cooper, Bette Danganan, DaJuan Foley Jr., Morgan Gregory, and Noel Olson (Performers); Natoxie (Music); Malou Beauvoir (Live music); Julien Creuzet (Concept, videos, sculptures, and costumes); Ana Pi (Choreography); Scarlett Chaumien (Julien Creuzet studio coordinator) with Chadine Amghar, Iris Fabre, and Louis Somveille (artist collaborators); Emilien Colombier (Video motion designer); Timothée Sarran (Video sound Design); Charles Aubin (Centre Pompidou Jersey City Co-Director, formerly Performa Senior Curator and Head of Publications); Julia Simpson (Performa Biennial 2023 Senior Producer) and Josie Bettman (Performa Biennial 2023 Associate Producer).
The Amsterdam performances are presented by Hartwig Art Foundation in collaboration with National Opera & Ballet. For more information and tickets, please visit here.
About Julien Creuzet
Julien Creuzet is a French-Caribbean visual artist and poet who blends sculpture, installation, and poetry to explore his diasporic experience and connection to Martinique, his ancestral home. Influenced by Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant’s reflections on creolization and migration, Creuzet delves into the complex relationship between Caribbean histories and European modernity while addressing themes of emancipation and the present-day legacy of the Caribbean diaspora.
Recent solo exhibitions include LUMA Westbau in Zürich (2023), the LUMA Foundation in Arles (2022), the Camden Arts Centre in London (2021), as well as the CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel and Palais De Tokyo, Paris, both in 2019. Creuzet participated in Manifesta 13 in Marseille (2020), the 35th edition of the São Paulo Art Biennale (2023) and will represent France at the upcoming 60th Venice Biennale (2024).
About Hartwig Art Foundation
Hartwig Art Foundation is dedicated to fostering and facilitating the production, presentation, mediation, preservation, and collection of contemporary art. In addition to its multiple activities in productions with artists and partnerships with a wide range of institutions, Hartwig Art Foundation is currently developing a new museum for contemporary art in Amsterdam. For more information, please visit here.
Since 2023, Performa and Hartwig Art Foundation have been working together as part of a major institutional partnership. This partnership involves commissioning new performance works, expanding the Performa Archive, and implementing a fellowship programme that offers hands-on training for individuals working in the contemporary cross-media and performance field. For more information about the partnership, please visit here.
About Performa
Founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg, Performa has expanded the possibilities for visual artists working in performance, providing essential curatorial and production support, and, with its dedicated biennial, providing a worldwide platform for performance of the 21st century. Performa Commissions have entirely changed the possibilities of the form and its educational programs have shown its rich history as an integral part of artistic practice, reaching back through the centuries to the Renaissance. This visionary organization has entirely transformed every art institution’s approach to visual art performance, now a staple in art museums and galleries throughout the world. Since 2005, Performa has presented nine editions of its three-week international Performa Biennial that have animated every borough of New York City every other year.
