Alexandra Bachzetsis - An Ideal for Living

Alexandra Bachzetsis is developing a piece that cuts across the boundaries between dance, performance art, visual arts and theater. It makes use of the body as an artistic and critical apparatus, a locus of transformation and experimentation and a means of communication. Bachzetsis is fascinated by pop culture, which she considers at best evocative and seductive, at worst manipulative. And she draws amply on pop culture for gestures, movements and styles of dance, many of which are linked to specific musical genres, in order to express emotion.

An Ideal for Living, an exhibition specially conceived for Centre culturel suisse - Paris, forms part of her exploration of the subject of bodies over time, which has also given rise to a dance piece called Escape Act. Making use of various garments and accessories in a process of constructing imagination and desire, the artist explores ways in which bodies and objects are reversible. Bachzetsis draws inspiration from vogue culture—particularly as showcased in the 1991 documentary film Paris Is Burning—an urban dance style that emerged in Latino and African American transgender and gay communities, characterized by fashion poses and other codified movements.

Her exhibition comprises an installation of three simultaneous video projections in which a pair of teenagers, a boy and a girl with an uncanny resemblance, act out real-life situations and sing songs. The installation includes low platforms like mini-stages inviting exhibition-goers to strike poses or sing out loud, along with various gym equipment on which to warm up and shape up one’s body. It turns out that some of these objects, designed to protect against a danger or optimize certain physical exercises, are also liable to be used dangerously, even violently. This inherent ambiguity suggests the potentially subversive ambiguities of body language.

An artist's book, published by Centre culturel suisse - Paris and designed by Julia Born, is also part of the exhibition. Stills of poses struck by the cast of Escape Act are juxtaposed with shots of ambiguous objects and arranged according to instructions to perform certain movements. Two contributions by Paul B. Preciado sow further confusion: a prose piece propounding a philosophical approach to movement and a poem conceived of as an encyclopedia of contemporary sexual subjectivity, derived from a human brain and artificial intelligence.

Alexandra Bachzetsis choreographs pieces for the theater and for exhibition spaces. As part of her exhibition at Centre culturel suisse - Paris she is going to stage a special version of her upcoming show Escape Act, featuring Sotiris Vasiliou and Owen Ridley-DeMonick. The performance will take place during the opening on Friday, September 7, at 6pm.

Based in Zürich, Bachzetsis began choreographing in 2001 and has created and staged over 25 pieces to date at various international venues. She has also shown her works at a number of museums (Kunsthalle, Basel (2008); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013 and 2015); Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Tate Modern, London (2014); MoMA, New York (2017)) and international exhibitions (5th Berlin Biennale (2008); documenta 13, Kassel (2012); BIM, Geneva (2014); documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017)). In 2018 she won the Kunstpreis of the City of Zürich and began teaching at HEAD, the Geneva School of Art and Design. Her dance piece Escape Act will be presented at the PACT Zollverein in Essen on October 19, 2018, and various other venues, including the Centre Pompidou, in 2019. She works with the galleries Kurimanzutto in Mexico City and Meyer Riegger in Berlin and Karlsruhe.