Die Dinge der Welt

The title Die Dinge der Welt [The Things of the World] says: everything. It uses a terminology and language that perhaps currently seems old-fashioned. The title is big and tells of the desire to create and understand connections. The title is a challenge, a presumption and an excessive demand! The things of the world are not comprehensible. Or they no longer exist. Or they have become too many. They have turned into situations and constellations, materiality and manifestation, and then again new realities. In view of the chaos, order seems like a naive pipe dream.

So what world is being talked about here, and what things? Gehmacher analyses questions of connections, and also one’s own location in them. When terms like thing and world, time and space, object and subject lose their relevance and different “realities” become the foundations of life, then perhaps the ubiquitous idea of the “transience” of this world should be accorded more regard.

Perhaps it is exactly these questions and the desire to understand this urgent craving that permits him to make a fresh attempt to define an attitude that absorbs the present but also opposes something to it. Perhaps in this work it is a question of just experiencing one’s own position, again gaining ground and accepting that an overview or even control of the things of the world seems impossible.

Philipp Gehmacher lives in Vienna and works locally and internationally. He is a choreographer and dancer. His works explore movements and actions inscribed in the body and lead to research fields such as gesture, space and contact. Between 2007 and 2012, alongside numerous choreographic works, there were also collaborations with Meg Stuart and Vladimir Miller, which gave rise to stage works and video installations (dead reckoning, 2009, the fault lines, 2010). Since 2008 he has developed the lecture performance walk+talk (http://oralsite.be/pages/Walk_Talk_Documents) and has been concerned with language, speech and expression (SAY SOMETHING, 2013). Since 2011 there have been exhibitions and video works (my shapes, your words, their grey, 2013). Gehmacher’s focus is currently on work on objects and materials and the design of walk-in spaces (der grauraum). Since 2014 Gehmacher has also been part of the Sculpture and Space class at the University of Applied Art, Vienna. He received the renowned Jerwood Choreography Award and the Austrian Advancement Award for Dance from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Art and Culture. In 2016 Gehmacher presented new sculptural works and performances in Salzburg in the Museum der Moderne, in Graz for the Steirischer Herbst festival, in Helsinki at the Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival and in Sydney at the Sydney Biennale.