ART-ACT-BOX: Performing the Exhibition
Interactive contemporary dance performance&exhibition

Performing the Exhibition: ART-ACT-BOX
The basic definition of an exhibition is a “form of presentation (show, display) of a work of art in a gallery or museum space.” (1) In the normal order of things, visitors enter the exhibition space after the exhibition is set up, to observe the exhibited works of art. The exhibition is created before the audience arrives, (2) and its form, course and duration generally do not depend on their presence or absence.
In Andreja Kulunčić’s art project Performing the Exhibition: ART-ACT-BOX, each of these assumptions is overridden. The exhibition space is not found in an art institution, the audience does not ‘enter’ the space, but rather the space where they already are is ‘transformed’ into the exhibition space, and without them the exhibition itself does not exist. The exhibition is not set up in advance, but performed live with the audience. The performer, a contemporary dance artist, using the ART-ACT-BOX object, containing collapsible props, “assembles” the exhibition with the audience. Taking the discursive workshop format, the exhibition develops from a static to a dynamic, collaborative event, while the audience ceases to merely observe and becomes an active participant.
In her experiment with the exhibition medium (3) and its performative, participatory and communicative potential, Andreja Kulunčić attempts above all to mediate the critical art practice of the 1960s and 1970s to the public, simultaneously providing them with creative tools for social activation and critical engagement.
By uniting artistic, organisational, curatorial and educational functions, she realises the exhibition as a work of art and the work of art as an exhibition, achieved through performative interaction with the audience. It may be non-artistic like the actual performance context. If invited, the exhibition “goes” to a local community, institution, organisation or informal group.
As in other projects, Andreja Kulunčić (4) begins the overall process of realising an artistic project with research, in this case, into documentation of works of art held in the archives of the four museums which have come together for the Performing the Museum project: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the Antonio Tapies Foundation in Barcelona, the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad, and the Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts in Slovenj Gradec. From this research, the concept for the performance and the ART-ACT-BOX itself has arisen, the contents of which are based on the methods, materials and techniques used in works of art by the Group TOK, (5) the Group of Six Authors, (6) Pino Poggi, the Group KÔD, (7) Bogdanka Poznanović, the Group Bosch+Bosch, (8) the Group Art&Language, and Lygia Clark. These individual artists and groups are linked by the practice which was known as 'New Art' in the years of its inception – the 1960s and 1970s.  The artists introduced non-art materials into the sphere of art, experimented with new media, tested out unconventional methods of exhibiting works of arts, addressed a random public, often in non-artistic spaces, paying greater attention to the process of how a work of art is created than the objects themselves, and establishing communication at the centre of their interest. Questioning critically the sociopolitical context around them, they aimed through their activities at social transformation, in which each individual could be involved by activating their own creative potential.
Sharing similar convictions, consistently present throughout her artistic practice, Andreja Kulunčić  adopts artistic methods she has detected (for example, proposals for actions in public spaces, exhibitions-actions, theoretical installations, arte utile, direct work, performances, manifestos, bodily gestures, etc.), and transforms simple materials (for example, mirrors, adhesive tape, coloured ribbons, pencils, markers, torches, cardboard boxes, postcards, etc.) into the construction elements of a 'do-it-yourself exhibition box'.
By yielding her voice to the performer (a dance artist), Andreja Kulunčić creates a situation in which the chosen artistic practice is made visible and accessible to the public. Through predeveloped choreography, the performer uses movement (gestures) and words (dialogue, readings, statements, recorded material) and the components of the ART-ACT-BOX to give instructions to the audience and involve them in the process of creating the exhibition. At the same time, the actual process can be identified with the desired artistic product. (9) It depends primarily on trust, cooperation and communication between the performer and participants, and between the participants themselves. In the space-time event through which the dance artist guides them, they develop gradually from mute recipients, through trying out new creative tools, into active performers. By using artistic materials, they perform works which encompass the segments of the space (private body space, public city space, and wider natural space) the sociopolitical context (the city, the state, the world) and the effects (interaction, communication, contact) desired by the selected artists. As the performance progresses, the ART-ACT-BOX is emptied, and the art materials used disappear, becoming part of the discarded object. So each work of art is transferred live into the present. From the visual documents – mostly black-and-white photographs on which often considerably complex actions are reduced – gestures return to space and time. Documentation is performed, not with the aim of recreating the actual work of art, (10) but rather activating a totality of interaction which the work has the potential to instigate. In this kind of interactive realisation, the active inclusion of the audience is needed and without it, the exhibition would be impossible. By liberating the knowledge of art locked away in institutional reserves, and transferring it outside conventional institutional spaces and utterance, through new combinations of recognisable presentation and educational forms, the artist discreetly conveys it, thus opening up a space for creative (co)operation.

1 Miško Šuvaković, 1999, Pojmovnik moderne i postmoderne likovne umetnosti i teorije posle 1950, Beograd – Novi Sad: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti Prometej, p. 132. Contemporary artistic and curatorial practice, naturally, continually tests the many spaces outside art institutions.

2 Among well known examples of audience participation in the process of creating an exhibition is certainly do ti by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Hans Ulrich Obrist 2011, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating,* Berlin: Sternberg Press.

3 Terry Smith, 2012, Thinking Contemporary Curating, New York: Independent Curators International; Elena Filipovic, When Exhibitions Become Form: On the History of Artists as Curator, Mousse 41, 2015; Hans Ulrich Obrist 2010, A Brief History of Curating, Zurich: JRP|Ringier; Barnaby Drabble, Federica Martini, Sibylle Omlin (ed.), Performing the Exhibition, Oncurating.org no. 15, 2012.

4 Irena Bekić, 2013, (Po)etika društvenih promjena: MAPA, Andreja Kulunčić: Umjetnost za društvene promjene, Zagreb: MAPA

5 The group was active in Zagreb from 1972 to 1973, and its members were Vladimir Gudac, Dubravko Budić, Davor Lončarić, Ivan Šimunović, Gustav Zechel i Darko Zubčević.

6 The group's members were Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Vlado Martek, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović i Fedor Vučemilović. It was active in Zagreb from 1975 to 1981.

7 The group was active in Novi Sad from 1970 to 1971 and its members were Slavko Bogdanović, Janez Kocijančić (to July 1970), Miroslav Mandić, Mirko Radojičić, Slobodan Tišma, Peđa Vranešević (from December 1970) and Branko Andrić, who left when the group was founded. Also associated with it were Kiš-Jovak Ferenc, Božidar Mandić and Dušan Bjelić.

8 The group was active in Subotica from 1969 to 1976. Its members werer Slavko Matković, Edit Basch (to 1970), István Krekovics (to 1970), Zoltán Magyar (to 1971), László Salma, Bálint Szombathy , Slobodan Tomanović (to 1971). László Kerekes (from 1971), Attila Csernik (from 1973), Katalin Ladik (from 1973) and Ante Vukov (from 1975).

9 Irena Bekić, 2013, (Po)etika društvenih promjena: MAPA, Andreja Kulunčić: Umjetnost za društvene promjene, Zagreb: MAPA

10 Philip Auslander, 2006, The Performativity of Perfomance Documentation, PAJ 84, pp. 1-10.