This is an interview with the artist Rebecca Davis, who presented her performance News at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (Basel, Switzerland), as part of the one day exhibition The Artist is an Explorer, curated by Marina Abramovic.
Rebecca Davis: News. Performance at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Basel, Switzerland). Interview with Rebecca Davis, September 20, 2014.
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Exhibition text:
News is a durational performance by Rebecca Davis that yields a large-scale drawing. The work engages the public as performers. Performers walk in a circle on a large sheet of white paper wearing makeshift shoes constructed from newspaper. Over time, the newspaper’s black ink transfers a variegated circle onto the white paper, which leaves a visual record of the performance, and blurs the individual headlines and stories into a collective smudge.
Rebecca Davis’s (1977, United States) work encompasses performance, installation and sculpture. Davis is currently an Artist-in-Residence at HERE Art Center, where she will premiere a new evening-length performance in Spring 2015.
Davis choreographed three works for Allora & Calzadilla: Body in Flight (Delta) and Body in Flight (American) for the 54th Venice Biennale United States Pavilion, and Revolving Door for the 11 Rooms, 12 Rooms and 14 Rooms exhibitions.
Davis was a Re-performer in the Museum of Modern Art Marina Abramović retrospective “The Artist is Present”, and she has trained performers in Abramović’s work in many contexts since then. She has also performed in the work of Ursula Eagly, Deborah Hay, Juliette Mapp, Steve Paxton and Kathy Westwater.
Davis’s work has been supported by Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Bogliasco Foundation, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Movement Research and Raketenstation Insel Hombroich, among many others.