• Performance

Regina José Galindo - Birds

State and Nature performance program

Dates

  • Su 07.11., 12:00

Artists

  • Regina José Galindo

Language

  • English
  • German

To the exhibition

BIRDS (2021)

The birds fly high

and sing while migrating

and migrate while singing

Regina José Galindo's artistic practice is characterized by the use of her own body, bringing together people and formating groups, and critical engagement with political, post-migrant and feminist issues. In 2015, Galindo created moments of peaceful coexistence with migrants in Palermo as part of her performance Raíces (2015), which is presented with a photograph at an off-space within the exhibition State and Nature.

As part of the performance program, José Galindo creates a space for exchange and self-determined representation with actors who now live in Baden-Baden in the course of migration movements since 2014. The participants sing songs to which they have a special relationship, accompanying them through everyday life, and have perhaps been part of an identity-forming, familiar practice since childhood and thus help facilitate encounters on both an artistic and personal level.

Since February 2016, asylum-seeking people have been housed in the Waldseeplatz refugee shelter, located in the west of Baden-Baden, in a wooded, secluded area. The performance at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden as a central, easily accessible location thus raises questions regarding the significance of locality and site and addresses institutionally-supported decisions regarding the treatment of refugees.

The inaugural major exhibition under the new direction at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, State and Nature, will be prolonged until November 21, 2021 and continues with a leading performance program. Composed of new commissions by Alexandra Pirici, Regina José Galindo, Mehtap Baydu and projects specifically conceived for Baden-Baden, the program brings together what defines contemporary understanding of performance with specific notions, aspects, and dynamics of the performance field.

From politics to choreography or social engagement to sound elements and filmic space, it engages publics in many layers and methods of remembering, forgetting, relocating and resetting through performative tools of artistic research.

Çağla İlk and Misal Adnan Yıldız manifest their approach in their statement: 

“We are feminist, queer, migrant, trans-political subjects. This program might be the source of disorientation, which Baden-Baden needs, or the point of distraction that this city demands. We see how Baden-Baden could become a conceptual stage for experimenting with everyday life. Even just sitting at the Lichtentaler Allee for an hour one might observe so many miracles of nature and orders of state happening around the Kunsthalle as part of everyday reality. This location is our muse, and the politics it brings, our homework...’’