Heyer Thurnheer

“The audience is present”

The audience is present

As textual work, "The audience is present" refers to the experience I had a week ago at the opening here at Ari in front of the vitrine-Museum DE AANSCHOUW, where the work of Bernat Daviu, Rothko´s Jacket, was shown.
The audience standing around this unique museum, just over 1m high, 70cm wide and 30cm deep, took up a very large physical space in comparison.
What took place in this moment was the celebration of the exhibited artwork, and on the other hand it was obviously also the social celebration of the coming together and individual-collective presence - the audience seen as a performative act.
In this respect, the textual work "The audience is present" refers quite generally to contexts of the social coming together for the opening of exhibitions. On the one hand it is the work we want to see, on the other hand there are various other motives for showing presence, or for others not to be present.
From the outside, the social phenomenon of presence or absence in a swarm of free individuals is something that definitely attracts my social interest.
The textual image shown here originates from a registry in which I weekly record actions, events, encounters and whereabouts. It traces the names of people I knew in the audience visiting an exhibition I recently participated in.
(For privacy reasons I have changed the names a little bit.)
With a winking eye, the work can of course also be read as a not entirely uncritical greeting to the title "The artist is present" of Marina Abramovic's performance and to the particular egocentric value focus it serves.

Curator: Kiki Petratou

Fotografie: Nienke Simons