Give Rise To Billy J. Bultheel

Give Rise To Billy J. Bultheel
19.11.2021

Performance

Billy J. Bultheel (*1987 Brussels, lives in Berlin and Brussels) is a dancer and musician who uses architectural set pieces to occupy different spaces in his performances and installations. HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is pleased to present an adapted version of his latest performance Invisible Hand, which will take place in a baroque environment in Graz.

Billy J. Bultheel (*1987 in Brussels, lives and works in Berlin and Brussels) is a dancer and musician whose performances and installations have used architectural set pieces to occupy different spaces. Whether on a residential rooftop or a church, Bultheel’s collaborative works always provoke a productive tension with the site in which they are presented. Central to the artist’s practice is his longstanding engagement with medieval as well as baroque multi-tone music, which he combines with elements of noise, electronics, and metal. Bultheel sees his compositions as sonic landscapes, in which the dance, movement or performance of the musicians and the audience activate the composition. The musicians, performers and audience operate as agents that move through a topological score organized around choreographic tasks and musical passages. The result is a composition intrinsically entangled with movement and space, a concert that reveals itself through dance. His new project Invisible Hand is commissioned by the Performing Arts Festival in Olomouc, the 7th Athens Biennial and RadialSystem in Berlin, continues his series of concert performances that look closely at the social performativity of sound and music. HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is very pleased to present an adapted iteration of Invisible Hand within the program of 2021. Following Signs of Invasion (2018) which explores the history of sonic warfare – and When Doves Cry (2019) which looks closer at the sound and the construction of gender identity, Invisible Hand re-visions moments from the recent global lockdown where the disappearance of a physical social space left us at the mercy of digital platforms and social media. Re-enacting the experience of time halting, turning inwards and reinventing one’s grip on reality. The performance in Graz will take place in a baroque church and appropriates the pathos and fetish of architecture in order to reveal or deconstruct it in a different way.

Curated by Cathrin Mayer

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Billy J. Bultheel
*1987 Brussels, lives in Berlin

began his collaboration with artist Anne Imhof in 2013 and became an integral part of her group of close collaborators, beginning with her early works School of the Seven Bells, Parade, Deal, Rage, which have been shown worldwide in museums such as PS1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Liste Basel, Basel.

In 2016, Bultheel wrote the music for Imhof’s wildly acclaimed opera ANGST, which was performed at Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and MAC Montréal, Montréal. In 2017, at the invitation of Susanne Pfeffer, Bultheel composed and produced the music for Imhof’s performance FAUST for the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. In 2018, Bultheel brings together his practices in performance and composition in large-scale performance installations. He transforms entire architectural complexes into musical instruments and uses performance to activate these instruments with choreographed movement. Recent works include The Minutes of Olomouc (2020), When Doves Cry (2019), and Signs of Invasion (2018), the latter of which took place at the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin.