PUBLIC MOVEMENT: On Art, Politics, and Dance

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September 30 marks the start of an experimental exhibition project at Moderna Museet Malmö. With an overall focus on how our bodies can challenge social norms and values, power and powerlessness, visitors will be able to experience an exhibition of international breadth while at the same time participate in a variety of workshops.

PUBLIC MOVEMENT: On Art, Politics, and Dance is a participatory exhibition project that examines how the body’s physical presence and movement have been used to express liberation, resistance, a political stance, and identity. The project involves fifteen internationally active artists who, in a variety of ways, have explored the human body’s relationship to politics, popular culture, and to various public and commercial spaces.

A new work by Conny Karlsson Lundgren entitled (Dissident) Dance Actions will be shown here for the first time. The point of departure is the Danish gay activist group, Bøsseaktivisterna, which held a number of dance protests in the early 1970s, as a reaction to a legal ban on same-sex couples dancing together in public space. An affiliated struggle against discrimination and for the right to determine one’s own sexual identity is featured in Sara Jordenö’s celebrated film KIKI, tracing a group of racialized LGBTQ youths in New York City.

PUBLIC MOVEMENT also features works in which the freedom of movement is a matter of life and death. In the artist Halil Altındere’s film Homeland, which takes the form of a music video, we see people executing acrobatic arts in order to get past a border crossing scattered with landmines.

“It’s easy to forget to what extent our bodies and movements are governed by social norms, power structures, conflicts, and economic interests,” say Joa Ljungberg and Andreas Nilsson, curators of the exhibition. “PUBLIC MOVEMENT can be seen as a common exercise in reflecting on this matter. We hope the project will inspire questioning as well as new expressions.”

A number of performances will be presented, including Eglė Budvytytė’s Choreography for the Running Male. Here we get to follow nine men as they slowly jog through the streets of Malmö, while performing choreographed movements to convey feelings such as sorrow, shame, and vulnerability—paired with military precision and control.

PUBLIC MOVEMENT also offers a substantial program of activities in which visitors can themselves participate. There will be workshops that focus on a variety of topics, but with the body’s presence and movement always in the center, for our youngest visitors as well as for teenagers and adults. All of our visitors are welcome to participate regardless of experience or physical ability.

“We invite our visitors to experience Moderna Museet Malmö—through dance and movement.” says Education Curator Ana María Bermeo Ujueta. “We have therefore started a collaboration with influential and experienced contributors from the Öresund region, the street dance company Freestyle Phanatix and the dancer and choreographer Atoosa Farahmand. They’re going to offer different kinds of workshops in which participants can explore movement and their own bodies. We want everyone to feel welcome—those who already feel at home in the museum, but also people who have never been here before.”

Kilde: Moderna Museet Malmö