Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 2

Swinging plumb bobs hang in a gridded formation across a large room as visitors attempt to walk among them without making contact. The installation, Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 2 by William Forsythe, is shown above at Essen‘s Folkwang Museum in 2013, and will be at la Grande halle de La Villette for le Festival d’Automne à Paris through December 31st, 2017. From Forsythe’s site:

Originally created for a solo dancer and 40 pendulums in an abandoned building on New Yorks historic High Line, the installation has been continuously developed in contexts as diverse as the monumental industrial architecture of the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, and the historical setting provided by the Arsenale of the Venice Biennale.

This new edition preserves and privileges two central interests in Forsythe’s oeuvre: counterpoint and the unconscious choreographic competence induced by choreographic situations. Suspended from automated grids, more than 400 pendulums are activated to initiate a sweeping 15 part counterpoint of tempi, spacial juxtaposition and gradients of centrifugal force which offers the spectator a constantly morphing labyrinth of significant complexity. The spectators are free to attempt a navigation this statistically unpredictable environment, but are requested to avoid coming in contact with any of the swinging pendulums. This task, which automatically initiates and alerts the spectators innate predictive faculties, produces a lively choreography of manifold and intricate avoidance strategies.