As part of Berlin Art Week 2022, Neue Nationalgalerie showed Simone Forti‘s performance “Huddle” in the upper hall of the iconic building by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (recently renovated by David Chipperfield Architects). It’s the third time that we document “Huddle”, following coverage at Le Mouvement in Biel/Bienne (Switzerland) and Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (Austria) (both in 2014). Huddle is regarded as a decisive work in the development of conceptual art, minimalism and performance art. “In the dance construction Huddle, the participants climb a structure that is formed from their own bodies. In a constant, but not rushing movement, one or two persons are detached from a group of approximately ten participants standing close together, climbing up on the bodies of the others and back into the crowd, from where immediately afterwards a further shape detaches itself and climbs upwards. A group of people develop into a sculpture in which bundled forces become effective.”

Simone Forti: Huddle / Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Performance, September 17, 2022.

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Exhibition text:

During Berlin Art Week from 14 to 18 September, Neue Nationalgalerie will be showing Huddle, a work by American artist and choreographer Simone Forti from 1961 in the upper hall. The 15-minute sculptural as well as conceptual performance will take place every 45 minutes from 10 am to 6 pm. Huddle is part of the groundbreaking and internationally influential series Dance Constructions, which began in the early 1960s and premiered in Yoko Ono’s loft in Manhattan. Huddle is regarded as a decisive work in the development of conceptual art, minimalism and performance art and comes on loan from the collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York to the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Simone Forti’s performances are based on the need to take advantage of one’s own physical discomfort. Her dance constructions are initially concise textual instructions. The unchanging pieces are not meant to develop, but to be placed independently in the space and to be experienced like sculptures. In the dance construction Huddle, the participants climb a structure that is formed from their own bodies. In a constant, but not rushing movement, one or two persons are detached from a group of approximately ten participants standing close together, climbing up on the bodies of the others and back into the crowd, from where immediately afterwards a further shape detaches itself and climbs upwards. A group of people develop into a sculpture in which bundled forces become effective.

The Artist Simone Forti
Simone Forti (born 1935 in Florence) is an American artist and choreographer of modern dance and expressionist painter. As a child of a Jewish family, Forti fled Italy in 1938 via Switzerland to Los Angeles, where she later studied for four years with the choreographer Anna Halprin and has since spent most of her life there. She joined the experimental downtown New York art scene during the emergence of performance art, process-based work and minimal art, and spent a prolific time in Rome in the late 1960s, using the spaces of L’Attico to study and perform.

Her work is regarded as the precursor of the Judson Dance Theatre of the early 1960s – a group of artists who experiment with dance, including Trisha Brown, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer – and Minimal Art. Forti describes herself as a “movement artist”.

Selected recent solo exhibitions include: Centro Pecci, Prato (2021); ICA Milano, Milan (2019); Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2019); Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York (2018, 2014, 2013, 2009, 1979, 1978); Kunsthaus Zürich (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015 und 2013); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Louvre-Museum, Paris (2014); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2014); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2013) and Guggenheim-Museum, New York (2013).

Curator Klaus Biesenbach; Assistant Curator Lisa Botti

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, as part of the Berlin Art Week, 2022.