Movement as art
At MFAH, ‘William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects’ tricks bodies and minds
The first time they step into William Forsythe’s installation “Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2,” some people race, thinking they must hurry to avoid disrupting the more than 200 stainless-steel plumb bobs that swing from the ceiling of the MFAH’s Cullinan Hall, about 2 inches above the floor.
But there’s no reason to rush. Visitors will even find a few open, “safe” spaces within the dangling lines, which hang from mechanized grids that slide, changing the positions of eight sections that control the lateral, often
counterpoint movement of the swinging plumb bobs. A rhythmic, percussive sound — almost like a hissy exhale — happens as the pistons slide, run by a system of digitally controlled, unseen air compressors.
Visitors now instinctively also pull out their cellphones, looking for Instagram moments, something they have come to expect each summer when the museum fills its wide-open Law Building gallery with an interactive summer exhibit. Last year people climbed up, through and under the Starn twins’ room-eating “Big
Bambú,” and various years before that, they relaxed on the floor underneath fantastical video by Pipilotti Rist and entered a sparkly “Infinity Room” by Yayoi Kusama.
But, surprise. “Nowhere and Everywhere” seems purposefully difficult to photograph, forcing visitors to focus on their physical experience and perhaps reminding them, as Forsythe has said, that the body is a “thinking tool.” Gaze at the meditative motion of the pendulums for a few minutes, and you might also just be hypnotized.
Forsythe, a renowned maker of process-driven, experimental ballet and theater works, began his career as a dancer in America and built his concepts during decades of directing Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet, and then Ballett Frankfurt, before founding The Forsythe Company. He closed that operation in 2015 and came back to the U.S., taking a teaching position at the University of Southern California.
His dances are always in demand. Houston Ballet recently took on Forsythe’s complex “Artifact Suite,” and his signature “In the middle, somewhat elevated” has been in its repertoire for years. Though his vocabulary-changing, challenging ballets explore the mechanics of movement with finely tuned bodies on stages, Forsythe turns out to be equally interested in how the rest of us navigate the space we occupy every day.
“Nowhere and Everywhere” belongs to a large body of “choreographic objects” he has designed for museums, galleries and other public arenas for more than 20 years. The MFAH’s first presentation of Forsythe’s work also includes “City of Abstracts,” a video wall built from a grid of small monitors with motioncapture technology that whimsically distorts the motions of everyone who passes through the museum’s entry lobby; and two smaller delights: The video “Analogon” rests atop a pedestal that looks suspiciously like a garbage can near the admission desk. The interactive “Towards the Diagnostic Gaze,” tucked into a small vestibule behind “Nowhere and Everywhere,” consists of a feather duster on a slab of granite with the instructions, “Hold the object absolutely still.” (Spoiler alert: You can’t.)
Visitors can also watch a short series of videotaped lecture demos by Forsythe on monitors in the museum’s library that illuminate his concepts, including using the body to draw or avoid imaginary lines in space.
Not sculpture but choreography
Is this sculpture? No, says Julian Richter, a cheerful German trained in theater, not dance, who has installed Forsythe’s objects for 18 years. “The artwork is the movement,” he says. “Forsythe would never say this is visual art. It’s choreography, and he’s a choreographer working in this field with his strategies.”
As mind-bending as that may sound, curator Alison de Lima Greene resisted giving viewers much explanatory wall text.
“The work is understood on a very intuitive level,” she says. “People can spend as much time as they want.”
In a video for the ICA Boston, where the show originated last fall (and included other works), Forsythe explains that his swinging pendulum system is in fact choreography, and visitors are both invited into it and asked not to interfere with it.
“By negotiating it, you actually become part of it, and in some senses you are choreographing your own role within the choreography,” he says. “There is a very interesting relationship between cause and effect, and the work is just as interesting from the outside as from the inside. … If you only listen to it, you’re going to notice patterns and probably try to figure out the effect of those patterns on the room you’re observing. When you’re in it, you are feeling the effect but not seeing the effect.”
In a catalog for the Boston version of the show, curator Eva Respini describes Forsythe as an insatiably curious polymath who draws from literature, music, mathematics, neuroscience and philosophy. She notes that over the past decade, dance and live art have been a growing presence in visual-art spaces across the globe. Across the street from the MFAH, visitors to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston are often treated to performances that respond to exhibitions; the MFAH and the Menil Collection have also incorporated dance into shows.
But those performances tend to be supplemental attractions to bring in more or different audiences. Forsythe’s work engages visitors more directly. Though we don’t need to be told how to move, he teases us into behaviors that may become revelatory — by painstakingly framing, editing and directing our encounters. (He once referred to this as “ambushing amateurs” to arrive at “a truly democratic way of organizing dance.”)
‘Perfect chaos’
He wanted the video wall “City of Abstracts” placed in the lobby for a reason, to create a chance encounter. “It’s a public
‘William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects’
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursdays, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 12:15-7 p.m. Sundays, through Sept. 15
Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet
Details: $16-$19 (includes general admission), kids 12 and younger free; 713-639-7300, mfah.org space where people are already moving. Nothing artificial added,” Richter says. “We catch them before they think, and they have this physical impact before they start reflecting about it.”
The motion-capture technology turns bodies into spiraling forms, on a slight delay; people inevitably go for cause-and-effect, trying to control the forms they see “reflected” in the mirrorlike monitors. The more they move, the snakier it gets.
Then they face the hall with the swinging plumb bobs. “It’s so big and beautiful, to make them stop thinking,” Richter adds. “It’s just a trick, you know?”
Greene installed benches along the Cullinan Hall walls to encourage visitors to slow down, pay attention and realize “Nowhere and Everywhere” is not just a labyrinth but a beautiful object in the space.
She appreciates how “Nowhere and Everywhere” emphasizes the architecture of the room by Mies van der Rohe, much like the first summer installation she curated there five years ago with Jesús Rafael Soto’s bright-yellow and white “The Houston Impenetrable.” Given the transparency of Forsythe’s work, viewers also see the literal theatricality of the big gallery, which resembles a proscenium stage with curved walls.
Forsythe’s objects are about temporality as well as motion, Greene says. “We’re used to durational video art: You have to sit down and watch it from beginning to end. Here, the duration is at a quieter level.”
Though “City of Abstracts” and “Analogon” are in a freeadmission zone, “Nowhere and Everywhere” and “Towards the Diagnostic Gaze” require a ticket. Greene says that helps the museum supervise visitors more carefully, controlling the number of people inside the installation if necessary. “It also gives it some gravitas because we don’t want people just to think of this as just a fun house.”
The pendulums are on a 30minute cycle. “At the beginning of the day, it’s a very slow start, like sunrise,” Greene says. “You ask yourself, am I seeing something move, or just imagining it? Then it really starts swinging.”
The height and spread of the piece is highly calibrated to the proportions of the room, like Forsythe’s dances. Even the volume of the acoustic element — those moving pistons — is calculated. “You have to find some kind of perfect chaos,” Richter says. “All the works are like this. It’s very much coming from the ballets.”
Failure required
And what happens if someone gets tangled in one of the pendulums? “There’s a very strong electrical charge, and they get thrown across the room!” Green jokes.
Richter laughs. “They will try it only one time,” he says, then explains that “failure” is another of Forsythe’s concepts, and not a negative. “It’s needed. If you avoid failure, you will never get anywhere.”
When “Everywhere and Nowhere” debuted in 2005, it was activated by a professional dancer. No more.
A group of dancers from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts experienced “Everywhere and Nowhere” the morning the show opened to help the museum create a video. They were told just to be themselves, without “performing.” That set up a potential to fail.
“Their natural reaction is to dance,” explains their teacher, Courtney Jones. She gave them a few phrases of movement and some improvisational prompts to try if they got stuck — change directions, your level or your tempo, and so forth.
“It’s a good challenge for these young artists who are so ready to tell their stories,” she says.
The first child into “Nowhere and Everywhere” looked like she wanted to perform, keenly aware of being watched but also dazzled — and fearless.
“Children are the best,” Richter says. “They’ll walk with eyes closed.”