= Performativity in The Visual Arts

Performativity in The Visual Arts

During her residency period at IVAA, Katerina has been interested in tracing performativity in the visual arts in Indonesia. More than generalising about the topic, her interest was related in seeing how some artists have a performative approach in their works.

The talk will start with a short introduction on the term performativity which will be used during the discussion. After this, there will be a presentation on traditional Javanese performances, which have been updated addressing contemporary topics. This subject matter will be explained in some examples of wayang and ketoprak performances, which have been used for certain political and social purposes.

The discussion continues giving some examples of visual artists who work in a multidiciplinary way and create works with a performative character. For instance, works that have a theatrical aspect and immerse the audience in the artwork. The talk will leave some questions open to discuss with the audience.

Katerina Valdivia Bruch is an independent art curator and contemporary dancer based in Berlin, Germany. She studied Philosophy in Lima at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and in Germany at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a postgrade in Cultural Policies and Management of the Universitat de Barcelona and a diploma of the Independent Study Programme of MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain.

She has been working in the field of arts management since 2001, including working for institutions such as House of World Cultures in Berlin and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, USA. After her work as Exhibitions and Programme Coordinator at Casa Asia, Barcelona, she started curating contemporary arts in 2006 with IN_FUSION, an exhibition about Peruvian contemporary art. IN_FUSION was presented at Cervantes Institute Berlin in 2007 and at Cervantes Institute Munich in 2008. She was invited as a curator for the International Prague Triennale in Czech Republic in 2008 with her project Hybrid Identities in Urban Landscapes. She has curated the yearly programme of exhibitions for the gallery IAC-Berlin after its opening in February 2008. Her latest project, Fragments of Feminity, was presented at CCCB (Centre of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) in Barcelona in December 2009. Katerina works also as art critic and has been writing for some printed and online magazines, such as Kunst Magazin Berlin, Artfacts.net and the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

As a contemporary dancer, she has performed in Peru, Brazil, Spain, Poland, Serbia and Germany working for different dance companies, but also presenting her own choreographies. She usually does collaborative works within a multidiciplinary approach and works with visual artists, sound artists and experimental musicians. At the moment, she is teaching contemporary dance technique for Tembi Dance Company at Tembi Rumah Budaya.

During her first residency period in Indonesia, held at MES 56 from December 2008-February 2009, she researched on contemporary Indonesian art, Indonesian recent history, and focussed her research mainly on artists’ initiatives in Indonesia. Back in Berlin, she gave a talk on artist initiatives in Indonesia during the Asia Pacific Weeks in Berlin in October 2009, invited by IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations). The same month, she was awarded with a curatorial scholarship from Goethe Institute to do a curatorial residency at IVAA (Indonesian Visual Art Archive). During her tenure at IVAA, December 2009 – March 2010, she has been focussing her work on performativity in the visual arts in Indonesia and on video art from Indonesia.

This April, she will present an exhibition on video art from Indonesia and will give a conference during the contemporary art symposium that will be held in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico, organised by the Department of Media Arts of the University of Guanajuato and the Jesús Gallardo public gallery in León. The video art exhibition is curated by Katerina Valdivia Bruch, in collaboration with Ade Darmawan and Hafiz from ruangrupa.

More information: www.artatak.net

A talk by Katerina Valdivia Bruch
Moderator: Agung Kurniawan
Translator: Syafiatudina
Venue: Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA) Library Patehan Tengah 37, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
March 22nd, 7.00 pm

http://www.ivaa-online.org/home/performativity-in-the-visual-arts/