Conditions of Political Choreography was a research project and exhibition initiated by the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) together with the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.). Internationally renowned artists working with diverse performative strategies — from the fields of visual art as well as dance, theater, and film — were commissioned to create new works in response to an imposing formal setting and also to specific social-political contexts. The works were presented in two experimental exhibitions, one in Tel Aviv, the other in Berlin, that are documented in this catalogue.
Diverse in themes and approaches, the artistic contributions — and the exhibitions’ structures themselves — that comprise Conditions of Political Choreography raise questions about the limits of belonging, artistic disciplines and imposed constructs. Parallel to rethinking context, the project challenged artists to use an experimental framework to push against the constraints of architecture and the medium of performance. In order to more fully unpack these questions, several discursive events took place both in Tel Aviv and in Berlin. Panels and artist talks, at times leading to heated debate, were seen as integral to the project. They generated new vectors of thought, some of which are continued in this catalogue.
Beyond descriptions of each art project, two essays have been commissioned: Dorothea von Hantelmann discusses a new turn to hybrid projects, while Moshe Zuckermann looks at the collective emotional dichotomy of German-Israeli relations and the problematics of reparations to Holocaust survivors. The catalogue surveys a project whose intellectual tentacles reach far beyond one easily condensed notion.
