{"id":186575,"date":"2018-11-27T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/compte-rendu\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/"},"modified":"2023-09-20T10:42:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T15:42:22","slug":"william-forsythe-choreographic-objects","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/","title":{"rendered":"William Forsythe, <em>Choreographic Objects<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Contemporary art museums often face the difficult task of developing exhibitions that cater to multiple publics. Striving for intellectual rigor and cultural relevance while succumbing to the overwhelming pressures of entertainment capital and divertissement, curators and educators alike seek to strike a balance between ticket sales and critical content \u2014 with mixed results.&nbsp;<em>William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects<\/em>&nbsp;at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston avoids the traps of this era of consumer driven, spectacle inducing blockbuster exhibitions. Cataloguing almost twenty years of installations, films, and sculptures produced by the American-born choreographer William Forsythe (b. 1949), the exhibition is a stirring invitation to participate in the experience of transposing principles of dance off the stage and into the gallery. Witty and humorous, self-reflexive, and conceptually rich, Forsythe\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Choreographic Objects<\/em>&nbsp;are easily accessible pathways into a surprisingly complex universe.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Forsythe, <em>Choreographic Objects<\/em> are a set of problems and relationships, a \u201ccombination of perceptual systems,\u201d that foster embodied action-based knowledge. From the outset of the exhibition, the audience is invited to take part in the work \u2014 to become kinesthetically aware through the choreographer\u2019s various propositions. In <em>City of Abstracts<\/em> (2000), a video-software that projects a delayed, out-of-sync version of the audience\u2019s live actions onto a wall, performances emerge out of everyday gestures. With this work, from the start of the exhibition laughter and complicity override awkward self-consciousness. Choreography becomes a tangible product of space and movement, but more poignantly it is immediately rendered physically accessible. In <em>Antipodes I \/ II<\/em>(2006), a two-channel video in which Forsythe uses his ballet training to be seen defying gravity by creating impossible spatial arrangements, a sense of play nourishes the imagination. The suspension of the laws of nature, or the desire to make them visible through various corporeal arrangements, is a recurring motif. This is the case in <em>Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 3<\/em> (2013), an installation in which the audience is invited to move through a room filled with moving pendulums while trying not to come into contact with them. As with all of the <em>Choreographic Objects<\/em>, Forsythe\u2019s material\/spatial score gives rise to countless performances, filled with unforeseen outcomes, failures, and perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns alignfull is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-layout-1 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8616_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-198459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8616_web.jpg 630w, https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8616_web-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8616_web-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>William Forsythe<\/strong><br><em>Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 3<\/em>, 2015. <br>Photos : Liza Voll, courtesy of the artist, Museum F\u00fcr Moderne Kunst Frankfurt Am Main, Germany, &amp; Gagosian, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8649_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-198461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8649_web.jpg 630w, https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8649_web-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8649_web-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>While not all of the works featured in&nbsp;<em>William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects<\/em>&nbsp;might inspire the same wonder and enjoyment, the overall experiential world proposed by the exhibition resonated with its audience. The enthusiasm of children giggling while trying to traverse a room using only suspended rings in&nbsp;<em>The Fact of Matter<\/em>&nbsp;(2009) was as infectious as the focus of adults earnestly contemplating the instruction-based scores in&nbsp;<em>The Differential Room<\/em>&nbsp;(2018) before attempting to execute each assignment. By bringing principles of dance and choreography into the realm of contemporary visual art, Forsythe moves \u2014 and urges us to move \u2014 where others have simply chosen to sit and contemplate silently.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style='display: none;'>Didier Morelli<\/div><div style='display: none;'>Didier Morelli, William Forsythe<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<strong>Institute of Contemporary Art<\/strong>, Boston<\/br><br>October 31, 2018 \u2013 February 21, 2019<\/br>","protected":false},"author":1303,"featured_media":198457,"template":"","categories":[884,892],"numeros":[],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[905],"artistes":[6724],"type_compte-rendu":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v20.1 (Yoast SEO v22.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>William Forsythe, Choreographic Objects &#8211; Esse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"William Forsythe, Choreographic Objects\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston October 31, 2018 \u2013 February 21, 2019\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Esse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/fr-ca.facebook.com\/revue.esse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-09-20T15:42:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8473_web.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"420\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@revue_esse\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"William Forsythe, Choreographic Objects &#8211; Esse","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"William Forsythe, Choreographic Objects","og_description":"Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston October 31, 2018 \u2013 February 21, 2019","og_url":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/","og_site_name":"Esse","article_publisher":"https:\/\/fr-ca.facebook.com\/revue.esse","article_modified_time":"2023-09-20T15:42:22+00:00","og_image":[{"width":630,"height":420,"url":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8473_web.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@revue_esse","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/","url":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/","name":"William Forsythe, Choreographic Objects &#8211; Esse","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8473_web.jpg","datePublished":"2018-11-27T16:03:00+00:00","dateModified":"2023-09-20T15:42:22+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/william-forsythe-choreographic-objects\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8473_web.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/IM_Morelli_LizaVollPhotography-8473_web.jpg","width":630,"height":420,"caption":"William ForsytheThe Differential Room, 2018. 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