Allora & Calzadilla

A few years after they became a collaborative team in 1995, Allora & Calzadilla already stood out due to the strong convening power, both emotional and reflective, of their works. At the beginning of the past decade, if we focus on the year 2003, when they had their solo show at the Americas Society in New York, the repertory of proposals featured by both artists included, among others, a drawing installation (Charcoal Dance Floor, 1997); a digitally manipulated photographis series (Seeing Otherwise, 1999-2002); a light installation (Traffic Patterns, 2001; 2003); a photographic series that documentally recorded the use of artistic strategies of a “performative” nature that they resorted to in a long-lasting political conflict (Land Mark [Foot Prints], 1999-2001) and a collective performance developed in the public urban space (Chalks, Lima, 2002).

In this sort of summary of the early production process followed by Allora & Calzadilla, what is remarkable is the diversity of strategies and mediums that they both employ from the very origins of their trajectory. They include drawing, installation, performance, sculpture, photography, chromatic spatial intervention, public art, art as a strategy of political activism... When faced with each proposal, the artists approach it as an artistic exploration of a problem or a situation that they address both from a specific critical perspective and through particular creative methods and resources.

Also, the strategies employed in the mentioned proposals emphasize the modes of relationship with the public conceived as co-author, laying the stress in this regard either on the work process or on the expositional act. In the installation Charcoal Dance Floor the realistic overhead drawings of people done in charcoal on the gallery’s parquet floor and devoid of any kind of protection, are erased by the visitors’ footsteps in an act of progressive representational dematerialization. The photographs in Seeing Otherwise are installed as billboards that create an intervention and transform the public space. In Traffic Patterns, the lighting system of the exhibition space varies according to the colors and sequence of a traffic light for public transport to which it has been connected, creating a spatial chromatic situation of great perceptive richness which, however, is determined by the functioning of this disciplinary artifact. Land Mark (Foot Prints), in turn, records the traces of the multiple footsteps left on the sand by the participants in the fight against the military occupation of Vieques − a small Puerto Rican island that for decades has lodged a United States Navy base covering most of its territory, which finally triggered a civil disobedience movement among the island’s inhabitants − who wore shoes for which the artists designed custom-made soles stamped with drawings and slogans denouncing the occupation and with proposals for the future, as symbols of popular demand. Lastly, Chalks renders the public space a place where art plays a role in relation to public demands, by displaying the strategy of a collective performance in which pieces of chalk − which due to their relatively large dimensions are reminiscent of minimalist sculptures − are distributed to ordinary people for them to write on the pavement at will, which in Lima culminated in police intervention as a result of the strongly subversive and critical tone in some of the messages. Video, and especially sound as a particularly connotative element in “performative” situations, have occupied a considerable part of Allora & Calzadilla’s attention throughout the past five years. In particular, as of the creation of Clamor, 2006, sound in its widest definition became a decisive component in these artists’ installations-performances, as ratified by Wake Up (2007), Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano, 2008 and Compass (2009). In the space showcasing Wake Up (see the video on youtube), subdivided by panel structures that complicate the spectator’s displacements, the orange lights brighten and dim partially and intermittently, and with varying degrees of intensity, taking their cue from the sound of a trumpet playing Reveille in a range of styles. In Stop, Repair, Prepare... (See also the video on youtube), moving about at his discretion across the space of a gallery occupied only by the spectators, a pianist plays the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from his position inside a hole bored at the center of an old Bechstein grand piano, which has suffered the mutilation of a considerable number of strings as a result of this transformation, all of which results in an incomplete and strange interpretation. In Compass, the gallery has been subdivided by a wooden false ceiling that creates a new upper level where a dancer performs an a capella choreography above the empty exhibition space in the lower level, where visitors can only trace the composition created by those steps through their sound.

These proposals by Allora & Calzadilla function as actions that disrupt the routine forms of sound perception by introducing strangeness and questioning strategies into known sound matrices. In particular Wake Up and Stop, Repair, Prepare..., being based on popular musical structures associated to the patriotic-military discourse, lay open to discussion issues involving the political content of sound which are commonly veiled, hidden in the sphere of cultural consumption. Selected to represent the United States in the 54th Venice Biennial, Allora & Calzadilla are presenting in this event a project which, under the title of Gloria, gathers together six new works of theirs that Intend to transform the interior and the exterior of the United States pavilion “into a dynamic and interactive space”. Anchored in the exploration of the concepts of competition and nationalism, Gloria lends a continuity to the artists’ recurring research on the mechanisms of politics through artistic forms, combining performance, sculpture, video and sound in a project that is also potentially seductive and moving for the spectator.

It is this simultaneous appeal to the spectator’s sight, hearing, physical displacement, thoughts and emotions that defines the expectations that Allora & Calzadilla intend to satisfy through their proposals.

Profile:

Jennifer Allora (Philadelphia, 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (Havana, 1971) first met in Florence, Italy, and they formed an artistic team when they were still university students. Later, they both completed their Masters degrees; Calzadilla received a Master in Fine Arts degree from Bard College in 2001, and Allora received a Master in Sciences degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003. They currently live and work in Puerto Rico.
In 1997, they had their first solo show, Charcoal Dance Floor, at the Luigi Marrozzini Gallery in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1998 they began their rapidly
ascending international career with their participation in the 24th Sao Paulo Biennial and in the group show Caribe: Exclusión, Fragmentación, y Paraíso (Caribbean: Exclusion, Fragmentation, and Paradise), featured at the Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC) in Badajoz and at Casa de América in Madrid.
Allora & Calzadilla have participated in group shows around the world and in international events such as the Sao Paulo, Venice, Gwangju, Istanbul, Lyon, Porto Alegre, Sharjah, and Moscow biennials, and the San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, Puerto Rico, among others. The duo’s long list of solo shows includes presentations in internationally renowned galleries and museums. Among the scholarships and awards they have received, mention may be made of the 2004 Gwangju Biennial Prize. Their works are represented in numerous institutional collections, such as those of Tate Gallery, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gante, Belgium. In 2010, the artists were
selected to show their work at the US Pavilion in the 54th Venice Biennial, which will take place from 4 June through 27 November, 2011; there they will present a project entitled Gloria.