Unfolding

BLACKKIT UNFOLDING is a new video series by performance artist Evamaria Schaller. She regularly meets with Boris Nieslony, the co-founder, long-time guardian and motor of the International Performance Art Archives. Together they unfold the contents of an archival box: letters, photographs, notes, small relics and more gradually come to light. Not only are the contents revealed, but also Boris Nieslony's personal knowledge and close ties to the items shown, the artists and, above all, the people about whom the archive has collected material. Archive meets living archive, archival material is woven into oral history. What is performance art about? About encounters.

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BLACKKIT UNFOLDING ist eine neue Videoserie der Performance Künstlerin Evamaria Schaller. In regelmäßigen Abständen trifft sie sich mit Boris Nieslony, dem Mitbegründer, langjährigen Hüter und Motor des International Performance Art Archives. Zusammen entfalten sie den Inhalt einer Schachtel: Briefe, Fotografien, Notizen, kleine Relikte und und und kommen nach und nach zum Vorschein. Entfaltet werden nicht nur die Inhalte, sondern auch das persönliche Wissen und die enge Bindung von Boris Nieslony zu dem Gezeigten, den Künstler:innen und vor allem den Menschen, zu dem das Archiv Material gesammelt hat.

Archiv trifft Living Archive, Archivalien werden in Oral History verwoben. Worum geht es in der Performance Art? Um Begegnungen.

Kindly supported by: Bezirksregierung Köln

Tatsumi Orimoto

TATSUMI ORIMOTO (*1946) is a performance and communication artist. An encounter with the "Bread Man", his "Art-Mama", "Communication Art" or the "Big Shoes" project can be seen. A performance artist with great output, vitality and humorous irony.

Esther Ferrer

Esther Ferrer (*1937) is best known for her performance art since 1965, both as soloist and member of ZAJ (until 1996). She performed throughout Europe, Cuba, Mexico, USA, Japan, Palestine. In 1999 she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale.

Lee Wen

Lee Wen (*1957 - 2019) was a Singapore-based artist and active in artist-run initiatives as part of The Artists Village in Singapore or the international performance art group Black Market International.In 2005 he got the Cultural Medallion in Singapore, in 2016 he won the Joseph Balestier Award for the Freedom of Art. He was one of the most important performance artists in Asia. The Asia Art Archive started digitalizing his personal archive in the early 1980s.

Carola Riess

Carola Riess understood life as art. She dealt with phenomena like:
— Alchemy in contemporary art. Early Romanticism (Johann Wilhelm Ritter)
— life as a constant performance, as a constant "life act"

— Encounter

— The present 

— The animal in man. Hand puppet, Gate sign, Totem animal

Carola Riess has laid the foundations for this archival question of how to do artistic research.
 Because of her, I started to see Early Romanticism as a fundamental part of the Performance Art Archive, Black Kit.

Reindeer Werk

REINDEER WERK was a performance duo. Thom Puckey and Dirk Larsen. They had a duo already in the late 60s and became known with it relatively early. As performers, both have engaged with language in the sense that the way a physical expression is a highly complex, gestural communication.In doing so, they have analysed and investigated the way in which the relationship between physical expression, gesture, movement sequences and timing is interrelated. They were already invited to the Documenta 6, where very little performance was shown.