FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present the International Visiting Artists series, with a focus on Switzerland. Claudia Bucher and Andrea Saemann will each present a new solo performance work. Join us the following afternoon for an informal gathering where each artist will talk about their individual practices.

In order to personally experience performance art history, Andrea Saemann’s work utilizes a process of the “performance copy”—repeating aspects or entire performance works by other artists. This allows the artist to enter into a work on a very visceral level with her body, and constrict her field of action, allowing for intense focus on even the smallest of gestures.

I work because I am impressed.
I recognize: authority is a performative achievement.
I see: a constricting frame opens up possibilities, to experience the world differently.
I benefit from that procedure.
In order to experience performance art history, I repeat single aspects or entire pieces. The process—to enter with my body into a performance copy—liberates unusual energies, on the battleground of autonomy versus heteronomy. The process of copying constricts my field of action and opens up new perspectives and sights on the world.

—Andrea Saemann

I perform in order to engage with my thoughts—and my questions, too. I think in images. I focus on the space surrounding me, myself as sculpture within that space, and on how an action can change the relationship between my body and my environment. As I interact intensively with a material in the here and now, a transformation occurs. I‘m interested in the moments of transition—when beauty changes into ugliness, when clean becomes dirty, when gentle turns aggressive—and the opposing associations they evoke.

—Claudia Bucher

© Claudia Bucher, Untitled Performance, 2012. Photo Henry Chan.