Silent Speeches
21.11.2024 - 28.12.2024
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz have been working together since 2007. In their films and installations, they challenge traditional norms of behaviour through unusual actions, compositions and bodily postures. The choreography of their works is unexpected and magical. The artists refer to the French sociologist and historian Édouard Glissant, who developed the idea of the right to opacity as a resistance against excessive exposure, leading to uniformity and facilitating easy manipulation. In effect, they argue for the return of phantasm as a category of life, of the inviolability of the private, threatened by excessive pressure for transparency. This is why their works often leave us with the unsettling feeling that not all is fully revealed.
The video “Moving Backwards”, featuring performers Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Latifa Laâbissi, Marbles Jumbo Radio and Nach, is a key part of the installation shown in the Swiss Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. The camera moves tirelessly from right to left and left to right at the same speed. Some walks, solos and group dances are performed in reverse, while others are digitally reversed. For example, one dancer learns their dance backwards. The footage is then reversed again in post-production. Sometimes only the music is reversed. All this creates doubts and temporal ambiguities about the overall installation. Somehow you never know if you are seeing the past or the future of a movement. The film is inspired by the women in the Kurdish guerrilla movement who, to deceive the enemy, wore their shoes backwards when crossing from one end of the snowy mountains to the other. This tactic saved their lives. It looks like they were walking backwards, but they were actually walking forwards. And in the opposite direction. “Moving Backwards” combines postmodern choreography and urban dance with original techniques and elements from queer underground culture.
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz often use microphones in their works. The video “Silent” from 2016 (shown at Sofia Art Projects Vol. 1, 2021, in the Sofia Largo) presents a silent figure in front of a row of microphones – a symbol of silence, which can be a weakness but also a resistance. Other installations with microphones called “Microphone Pieces” emphasize collective effort and creativity. In Structura Gallery, the artists present several compositions, one of them with microphones purchased in Bulgaria and carrying traces of speaking and singing in public during the socialist era.
The precarious act of stepping in front of a microphone and taking the stage brings about the promise of being heard and seen and, at the same time, might disclose one’s fragility. Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz’ exhibition “Silent Speeches” addresses questions of power, pleasure, and the experience of political backlash.
The exhibition, while engaging with assemblies of objects, dance movements and human collaborations, explores abstraction’s potential for resistance in the face of reactionary politics.
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Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz is a Berlin-based duo. Their work has been exhibited at the 35th São Paulo Biennale of Art, Crystal Palace/Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery in London, New Museum in New York, Coreana Museum of Art in Seoul, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Kunstmuseum in Basel, Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin and at the 58th Venice Biennale (Swiss Pavilion).
Recent solo exhibitions include: A Portrait, Leeum Museum, Seoul (2024), Walk Silently In The Dark Until Your Feet Become Ears, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2023-2024), “Portrait of a Movement”, Tensta Konstall Stockholm (2023) “Il cristal es mi piel – Glass Is My Skin” – at Crystal Palace Madrid / Museo Reina Sofia (2022), “Portrait of a Movement” CA2M Museum Madrid (2022), “Silent Manifesto” at Kunstraum Innsbruck (2021, “(No)Time” at Frac Bretagne (2021), “Moving Backwards” Swiss Pavillon, 58th Biennale di Venezia, “Ongoing Experiments with Strangeness” at the Julia Stoschek Collection (2019), Berlin, “Telepathic Improvisation” at Centre Culturel Suisse Paris (2018) and CAMH Houston (2017), “Portrait of an Eye” at Kunsthalle Zürich (2015) “Loving, Repeating” at Kunsthalle Wien (2015) “Patriarchal Poetry” at Badischer Kunstverein (2013), “Aftershow” at CAPC Bordeaux (2013), “Toxic Play in Two Acts” at South London Gallery (2012) “Contagieux!Rapports contre la normalité” at Centre d´Art Contemporain Geneva (2011).
Their latest catalogue “Stages” (2022) was published by Spector Books.
The project was realized with the financial support of: 
and with the kind assistance of Landis and Gyr Foundation,
Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris and Ellen de Bruijne Projects Gallery, Amsterdam.