Nicole Bachmann www.nicolebachmann.net Interactive Portfolio
‘hovers above the chest’ (2022) is a video work by artist Nicole Bachmann. Filmed in East London’s Hackney Marshes in 2021, it follows three characters on their erratic journey in the marshes and through the canal. Inspired by writers including Donna Haraway, Octavia E. Butler and Rosi Braidotti, the work explores the interrelation between bodies and environment, with a focus on the roles of voice and movement. As we start watching the work, we are taken by a sense of rhythm (traditionally defined as the relationship between one beat and the others), embodied by the performers who create community around each other and visually create a kind of composition, a movement— in its many meanings: a self-sufficient piece of music in terms of key, tempo, and structure; an act of moving; placing things in a different order or position, change; a group of people working together to advance their ideas. Combination(s) and rhythm(s) in this sense(s) manifest themselves in the relationships between the performing bodies, and, simultaneously, between the bodies and the environment. Additionally, an important layer that contributes to pace the work is the double channel view: one part focusing on details inherent to one performer at a time, and the other part giving a wider view including the group and its surroundings. This creates a sense of chorus and soloist, mixed up on a tangled timeline, accessible at different points simultaneously. The voice is a key element, a further articulation of the expanded idea of movement that comes up in the work. Voices interlace chorally and emerge separately, creating dissonance and perfect harmony at the same time. Repetition, breaks, pauses, hissing and howling bring us to understanding voice as the rawest of human tools to communicate and express. Between voice and movement in this sense, a new kind of epistemology emerges: ‘looking with the whole body brings other organs into play, lungs, heart liver and heart. It involves a metabolism and rhythm with the cosmos. Thus knowing is a bodily political practice that is repeated, composed but also that overflows’. Time in the work is non-linear, compressed and expanded at the same time. A kind of slow, tortuous future. A future in which the three performers are like sharers (similarly to the characters in O. E. Butler’s “Parable Of The Sower”): hyper emphatically looking for solidarity and connection when the outside world seems to have replaced these with mass alienation and displacement. They do their best to use their body and voice as forms of expression, as vehicles to make connections and to build kinship. Metaphorically, but also bodily and relationally, between them and with the multiple ecologies that surround them. Water, for example, is the fourth active character in the network they are placed in. Its presence reminds us where we come from and where we are going, while cradling our present— containing collective stories and histories, touching and infiltrating through skin, wounds and other orifices, viscerally connecting the performers bodies and their fluids, their essence. This helps us understand the situation beyond the binaries that have built up the concept of body throughout the formation of languages in the majority of the western countries, e.g. inside/outside, male/female, human/non-human or nature/culture, by offering fluid solutions to create new approaches to the idea of the body, in the best feminist new materialist tradition. We could say that Bachmann’s work revisits the idea of the body without organs: an extra personal, not-yet-organised level of affective qualities that allows new perceptions, new connections and new affects2. Going beyond structures, the corporeal is a place of relationships involving all the possible binaries at once and everything in between. Traditionally, in Bachmann’s work, the use and misuse of the voice has represented the main tool to dismantle hierarchies and binaries; and specifically in this work, the characters go a long way to explore further solutions that can not only deconstruct but also assemble, and shape new perceptions and meanings. hovers above the chest, 2022 HD video, dual screen, 20mins
1 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa, On practices and discourses of decolonization, pp xxvii 2 Posthuman Glossary, pp 75
shell of hope, in cycles, 2022 Performance For the Whitstable Biennale, Nicole Bachmann has brought together movement and voice to explore the forming of subjectivity and relationships at our present time. Informed by the pressing issues related to Brexit, hostile immigration policies and water pollution, the performance takes place in Seasalter beach by the southern coastal town of Whitstable, an area intensely affected by these matters. In what way does the concept of borders impact the development of identity in such a place? What is the role of the physical, natural and historical environment in these issues? Thinking about how emotions manifest in (this) space, four performers represent and enable states of mind connected to grief, anger, fragility and optimism and create a narrative of continuous and osmotic separateness and togetherness, by the water. Interweaving, crossing, separating and coming together as a group, while articulating vulnerability, otherness, not-belonging, displacement but also of kinship, sisterhood, mending and recovery, the performance unfolds in a polyphonic embodiment of perspectives on being a migrant. Rather than trying to break language in an act of rebellion, the work attempts to create a new story that intertwines with the one of the sea, another essential character in this work. Always in us and surrounding us, we are born in it. It brings us together and separates us only to connect us again later in various ways: water holds the atavic memory of everything in the world; has a mood on its own and a natural inability to contain any border. Its fluidity and dark depths offer solutions, in the best feminist and new materialism spirit, beyond the type of binary thinking that is traditional of white patriarchy, which has led to catastrophic outcomes in regards to pollution, underwater ecologies, vulnerability of the coastal environment and ability to create sustainable and healthy ecosystems. In the performance, this awareness and feelings merge with the embodied narratives of migration in the natural, rough setting, leaving us to wonder about our positioning in this matter. In addition to the relationship between the bodies, Bachmann has a strong focus on the voice, forming a chorus, concordant and dissonant at various times. This amalgam of voices adds to the intensity to the piece, whereby the audience participates in the voices being taken into account, or otherwise, not being heard. Bachmann‘s working method is based on improvisation and modularity and each of the two public events will vary from the next. This together with the climatic conditions, the changing tides and winds, means that the two performances will have similarities, but each will manifest difference. Performed by Chess Boughy, Yos Clark, Patricia Langa, Cian Mc Conn duartion approx. 30mins
partly anchored, a mesh of seeds, 2021
zig zag calling amending the net, 2021
Performance approx. 25mins with Chess Boughey, Carl Harrison and Aurore Vigneron
Performance variable 30 mins Performed by Donya Speaks and Natascha Moschini
The work was shown at ‘Nocturnal Creatures’, an all night arts festival by Whitechapel Gallery. The work explores connectedness and communication, through physical exchange and unexpected alliances.
Two dancers map their presence in the public environment through their interactions with each other and their surroundings, questioning power and normative structures within a gathering of individuals. Bachmann places emphasis on the voice which allows a calling to happen between the performers and highlights the idea of interconnectedness through sound and language in both articulate and inarticulate form.
How do we connect, communicate and share information with other human bodies but also the world around us? The performance explores exchange of ideas through movement and sound, touch and song, exploring modes of communication beyond language. It further explores power structures and dominant discourses, creating a space for improvisation and alternative, non-verbal meaning.
https://vimeo.com/580230802
At the same the voice and sounds cut through the ordinary sound levels, stopping people in their track and reacting to it in various ways pointing to established norms in public space and questioning their limits.
Link https://vimeo.com/596441125
along the rims, 2020 HD Video 25 mins With Nandi Bhebhe, Cian McConn, Patricia Langa. The work was shown at ‘Nocturnal Creatures’, an all night arts festival by Whitechapel Gallery.
Passwort: Nicole1234
Link https://vimeo.com/474971508
My practice is based on collaboration, exchange and the voice, the body as a place of knowledge and knowledge production. The work explores our connectedness on several levels, the myriad ways we can share information and how our bodies communicate with each other, which is sometimes below our radar. How can we be together as bodies and minds, have a productive and positive exchange, which relies not solely on language but on many other forms of exchange. Be it sounds, movement, touch, song. What happens in between bodies. Energies flowing. Vibrations penetrate. The skin breathing. Kinship between performers. Challenging normative assumption of language’s superiority in communicating information. Creating a space outside linear thinking and capitalist conformity.
ink on skin, 2020
indian ink on paper, 210 x 150cm Installation view Rub your shoulders with mine, Espace Topic, Geneva, 2020 Medium: three channel audio installtion, duration 26 mins Composition: Nicole Bachmann Voices by Patricia Langa, Legion Seven and Jia-Yu Corti Recording and mastering: Samuel Rodgers The recordings for the audio piece ‘ink on skin’ were taken during a the performance of ‘or what is’.
Link http://nicolebachmann.net/work/ink-on-skin/
I want to be with you all, 2021 indian ink on paper, 190 x 150cm
Full stop slightly high, 2020 Performance 60 mins Performed by Noa Genezzano and Aurore Vigneron Audio piece 13 mins Voices: Legion Seven, Aurore Vigneron, Noa Genazzano The work explored VITRINE’s unique space and its confined form which limits the movement of bodies, as a metaphor for the social constraints we may experience in our lives. These constraints manifest themselves socially, physically and economically in our bodies and our minds, creating multifaceted limitations on our lives. Bachmann is interested in how these constraints become rules and normalities, entering our lives and becoming negative parameters through which we exist.
http://nicolebachmann.net/work/full-stop-slightly-high/
As a narrow aisle, with not much space for manoeuvre, the space could be considered a physical representation of this restraint. Structural elements and platforms of varying heights will be built into the space. Performers had to negotiate these through movement and interaction between each other inside VITRINE, leaving marks on the white walls. When there was no performance, these marks became traces of their bodies’ movements. There was an audio work playing quietly when the space was empty through speakers attached to the windows. The audio piece used voice and sound extending the performances corporeality, standing in relation to the performance, but not a remnant of it. This facet of Bachmann’s practice imagines the body and movement through hearing. The audio shares the space with the site of the performance and explores its absence. Each performance lasted for approximately 1 hour.
or what is, 2019 Performance 30 mins Performed by Patricia Langa, Jia-Yu Corti and Legion Seven at E-Werk Freiburg, D und Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur
https://vimeo.com/372391071 Password: Nicole1234
The work investigates the nature of verbal and physical communication: how it is progressively emptied out of meaning through politics and mass media; how we are defined through the social and architectural structures in which we exist; and how to become catalysts for outside change. Working with dancers Patricia Langa, Legion Seven and Jia-Yu Corti, Bachmann calls upon a community of bodies and voices to think and feel differently, to stretch and widen these structures and rethink the connections that we already have.
A circle whispering dot, 2019 Performance 30 mins Performed by Sonya Frances Cullingford, Patricia Langa and Legion Seven
https://vimeo.com/315861015 Password Nicole1234
Nicole Bachmann, www.nicolebachmann.net, friendsfanzine@gmail.com 2008-10 2003-07
MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London, UK Diploma of Fine Art, Zurich University of the Arts
Nicole Bachmann works across video, text, sound, installation and performance, to investigate the wider socio-political impact of how meaning is made and who has access to making it. Her practice is grounded in writing which serves as initial material for her performances and sculptures reflecting her interest in utterance and performative text. Its circular movement from text, to audio, to sculpture and then to performance interests the artist as it highlights the relationship between poetry, voice, and the body. Largely based on feminist and emancipatory thought, Bachmann’s work thinks of the body as a place where meaning and knowledge are produced using voice and movement, to form an “embodied vocabulary” that creates narratives and stories away from dominant world concepts and beliefs. In becoming other-too, Bachmann questions the structures of social norms and inequalities through her own and others’ bodies and voices. This is inspired by Rosi Braidotti’s concept of how people as subjects are embodied and embedded in the world we are sharing through relational affectivities. Bachmann’s predominantly collaborative practice reflects this subversion, evoking a sense of togetherness and reciprocity to search for meaning away from the prescribed set of definitions. Activating the individual as well as the group, Bachmann questions how to become bodies of social and political change. Exhibitions 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014
The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK shell of hope incycles, Performance, Whitstable Biennale, UK, (solo presentation) passing me around, Espace Diaphanes, Zurich Performance Exchange. London, UK Nocturnal Creatures, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, (solo presentation) sol invictus, Fondazione Merz Palermo, Italy sol invictus, Istituto Svizzero Rome, Italy Echo 3., Sonic Matter Festival, Last Tango, Zurich, CH Along so long, VITRINE Gallery Basel, CH Tomorrow is an island, ADM Gallery, Singapore collateral event of Singapore Biennale Fluid Bodies, E-Werk, Freiburg i. Br. Germany Full stop slightly high, VITRINE Gallery, London, UK (solo presentation) Rub your shoulders with mine, Espace Topic, Geneva, CH (solo presentation) On Sight/Site, Public space, CH Sounding Off, VITRINE, London, UK Art Night London, UK Swiss Art Awards, CH A circle whispering dot, BolteLang, Zurich, CH (solo presentation) A circle whispering dot, Mimosa House, London, UK (solo presentation) The words we live in, kur. Gioia Dal Molin, Binz 39, Zurich, CH Commission Performance, Poetry festival, Frauenfeld, CH or what is, Commission Performance, Kunstmuseum Chur, CH Commission Performance, Mimosa House, London, UK Protect me from what I want, Kunsthalle St.Gallen, CH Personare I and II, Tenderpixel, London, UK, (solo presentation) Werkstipendien Stadt Zürich, Helmhaus, Zurich, CH Performative reading, Kulturbüro, Zurich, CH I Say, Corner College, Zurich, CH (solo presentation) A gesture towards transformation, Tenderpixel, London, UK Block Universe, Performance Art Festival, London, UK You, Helmhaus Museum, Zurich, CH London meets Altorf, Haus der Kunst Uri, CH Materialities of Language – The Last Frontier, Antiquariat Harsch, Winterthur, CH Manifesta11, Zurich, CH Screening at LUX Artists’ Moving Image, London, UK Performance, Cabaret Voltaire, Manifesta Performance program Take One/Take Two/Take Three, Eastside Projects, (March/April/May), Birmingham L*, a project by Marie-Michelle Deschamps, Darling Foundation, Montreal, CA Doings&kNOTs, Art Hall Tallinn, Estonia Rhythm of Thought, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK Look Live, Performance, ICA, London, UK Control/Shift/plus, Museum Bärengasse, Zurich, CH Werkstipendien Stadt Zürich, Helmhaus, Zurich, CH Objective Considerations, MOTINTERNATIONAL, London, UK Classroom, New York Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, USA Performance as Publishing, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK Swiss Art Awards, Basel, CH Say it in words, Coleman Project space, London, UK Aus dem Off, Winterthur, CH
2013 Disappearing Into One, Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK Words to Be Spoken Aloud, Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK Composing through words, Het Veem Theatre, Amsterdam, NL From script to reading to exhibition to performance to print, Rowing, London, UK Landmark Seizures, Aid & Abet, Cambridge, UK 2012 Performance as Publishing, Kunsthalle Basel, CH The Carousel Collection, Cabinett in Kallio Kunsthalle, Helsinki, Finland Word Art, Hoxton Arch 402, London, UK Der Autor ist anwesend, Symposium HKB Bern, CH 2011 Ha, around the corner of one eye, Perla Mode, Zurich, CH (Solo presentation) Space Exchange, The Woodmill at Aid and Abet, Cambridge, UK Performance as Publishing, Performance, South London Gallery, London, UK Textures of Time, Frederick Parker Gallery, London, UK ‘Natural language[nach-er-uhl lang-gwij]’, Vitrine Gallery, London, UK S.A.G.S., The Woodmill, Bermondsey, London, UK Café des Rêves,10 Jahre Videokunst Schweiz, Helmhaus Zurich, CH 2010 The Remnants of Something else, Videotank, Zurich, CH (Solo presentation) Travelling to the Unknown, 3e Weteringdwarsstraat 21-B, Amsterdam, NL Werkschau, Kanton Zürich, F+F, Zurich, CH The man who tasted shapes, Made in Goldsmiths Gallery, London, UK Radio performance, Charlie Woolly’ radio at Space, London, UK NowThen_, E:vent Gallery, London, UK MFA Fine Art Show, Goldsmiths College The Bergen Biennale 2010, Landmark Bergen Kunsthall / Entree, Bergen, Norway Pause & Eject 2, Shoreditch Town Hall, London, UK 2009 Display Series, Wartesaal, Zurich, CH (Solo presentation) You can find me in the lexicon, Archivbegehungen, Zurich, CH Multiplo_6 Uno Nessuno Centomila, N.O.Gallery Fuori Area, Milan, Italy Pause & Eject, Rag Factory, London, UK Soirée Me & My Friends, Goldsmiths College, London, UK 2008 Uncertainties, N.O.Gallery, Milano, Italy (Solo presentation) Liste 08, The Young Art Fair, Basel, CH (Solo presentation) The John Institute, Palace, St.Gallen, CH Launch Me & My Friends at Ooga Booga, Los Angeles, USA Awards/residencies 2021 Arbeitsstipendium Covid-19, Stadt Zürich 2020 Project grant, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, CH 2019 Swiss Art Awards shortlisted 2018 Werkbeitrag, Stadt Zurich, CH 2018 Freiraumstipendium, Kanton Zürich, CH 2016 Residency at LUX, London, UK 2016 Project grant, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, CH 2016 Grant for the Arts, Arts Council England, UK 2015 Werkbeitrag, Stadt Zurich, CH 2015 Residency at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh, UK 2014 Travel grant Arts Council England, UK 2013 Project grant Arts Council England, UK 2011 Escalator program, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, UK 2008 Art Prize 2008, Nationale Suisse, Basel, CH 2003 Swiss Design Award, CH Publications 2020-now DEARS, A magazine for transversal writing, edited by Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Robert Steinberger and Nicole Bachmann 2017 Grids, zine published by Innen 2016 Manifesta 11, catalogue 2013 From script ot reading to exhibition to performance to print publication, Rowing 2011 NowThen(__), Artist book with Laure Prouvost, EP Park, Jasiek Mischke, Una Knox and Nicole Bachmann 2008-2012 Fanzine Me & My Friends 2008 Uncertainties, Catalogue N.O.Gallery, Milano, Italy Liste 08, Exhibition catalogue 2003-2006 Fanzine Stella #1 - #5. Zurich, Switzerland: Nievesbooks. 2003 Swiss Design 2003, Désir Design. Baden, Switzerland Lars Mueller Publishers. Press 2020 2020 2020 2017 2014
a Dance Mag, by Tom Ellmer December 2020 this is tomorrow, Interview, online June 2020 podcast for Whitstable Biennale website, with Keira Greene Artreview online by Alice Hattrick 9 June 2017 Review Performance as Publishing by Lizzie Homersham in Frieze issue 160