Allora & Calzadilla performance 'Fault Lines' included in group exhibition at MoMA
19 November 2019
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has opened a group exhibition of large-scale, immersive installations entitled ‘Surrounds: 11 Installations’, exploring the question of how artists mediate between the need for intimate experience and an ambition to engage with the enormity of the world. Each work included in the exhibition was conceived out of different individual circumstances—as a contribution to a biennial, an element of a larger ongoing body of work, a response to a classic work of art history, or a stand-alone work. Many are large and imposing, at times surrounding the viewer, whilst others group smaller works into sequences that stretch across space.Allora & Calzadilla present Fault Lines, which was first shown at the 2011 Venice Biennale as part of the duo’s project representing the United States. The work consists of 10 two-step risers (used by singers in choral performances) produced from igneous rock that was displaced through sudden fissures in the Earth's surface, now activated by a pair of young male soprano performers. The boys sing at each other insults pulled from various sources that include Shakespeare’s plays and recent films and music, re-animating these verbal forms of conflict in a choreographed duet. As with the rock formations, the singers' high vocal tones will be subject to sudden change over time.
‘Surrounds: 11 Installations’ is on view at MoMA until 4 January 2020. Find more information here.
Image: Allora & Calzadilla, Fault Lines (2013), Ten metamorphic and igneous rocks, live performance by two boy soprano singers, Dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of Bob Rennie © 2019 Allora & Calzadilla. Installation view: Allora & Calzadilla: Fault Lines, Gladstone Gallery, New York, September 13 – October 11, 2014. Courtesy the artists and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Photography David Regen.
