Expanded Cinema ＊ Conditions of a Necessity

Set in a high diving swimming pool, a socialist modernist building, a group of artists are following the instructions of an Aqua-Aerobics coach. They had given her the task to form the group into a collective, through exercises in the water. The camera captures the individual reactions to the instructions above the water surface and the struggle underneath. In a state of voluntary floating, the responsibility of coming together as a collective is outsourced – to a coach – that we never get to see or to the water itself? The video is accompanied by a reflection on imposed collectivity.

The Expanded Cinema class took part in Conditions of a Necessity, The Exhibition with a collective video work portraying a team-building exercise. In your video, the process of forming a collective was playfully out-sourced to an instructor who commanded group cohesion via aquatic choreography in a public swimming pool. This experiment was also articulated via a sound installation. Can you elaborate upon these two works, and how they are related?

After our gathering in Baden Baden and thinking about working as an art collective, we tried to understand what working together means for us - as individuals (with our artistic egos?). We started a Google Document to exchange our thoughts, which we later edited as a script for a potential play/film. Interestingly, many of us expressed violent fantasies in connection with the idea of forming an art collective. Because we were not entirely sure if we intrinsically wanted to become a collective we had the idea of outsourcing the task to somebody else who would (perhaps in a neoliberal manner) coach us with the aim of becoming a collective. After considering a few different options like taking Ayahuasca collectively, an office-style team building seminar, and intercultural training, we finally decided to go for aqua aerobics. So, we instructed the aqua aerobics coach to show us exercises that would help us become a collective. We filmed thesession in a socialist modernist high-diving swimming pool in Leipzig and asked a camera woman to film our movements on the side of / above the swimming pool while also filming what was going on below the water surface with gopro cameras that we attached to our bodies. Editing the film we started to reflect on the notion of collectivity once again and it led us back to the initial impulse of relating it to violence. We created a mind map referencing a power point/office brainstorming aesthetics with fluidly shaped graphic elements in shades of blue, which we plotted on the floor.

The title Conditions of a Necessity emerged from a very specific moment in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, where the first part of the project manifest as a gathering at the Kunsthalle in which Expanded Cinema was a participant. There were already a couple of video works produced and shown at the end of the two-week Gathering period by some of the artists from the class. How were the themes and works further developed from that time and how did they evolve into their exhibition form?

During our first stay in Baden Baden, we produced a TV show that captured scenes from the city, which were commenting on our experience there. We had discussed the question of how to work together as a group and decided to find an overarching structure that could contain our individual contributions. The most challenging and exciting part was the collective editing process in the end. We didn’t sleep at all for one night but, in the end, the material came together quite well. For the second exhibition though we wanted to move away from the containing structure as it felt like cheating somehow - because this allowed us to still work for ourselves and only in the end we would need to bring our contributions together. So we tried to find a more collective way of working. At the same time, we were also highly suspicious of that aim, which is why we outsourced the task in the end. In terms of the work’s content we moved away from the themes that were present in our first collective work, which were site-specifically related to the city of Baden Baden and dealt with the wealth and matters of class that we had observed there.

The Expanded Cinema class approached the notion and challenge of collectivity with a humorously critical methodology: the art works that emerged grappled with the process of forming a collective in and of itself. Early on in your process, you attempted the drafting of a collective script-writing exercise that was eventually abandoned. Can you elaborate on how this process of “becoming a collective” emerged as the focal point unto itself when it came to the question of realizing an artwork together?

The script, which we wrote as a proposal, was quite similar to the film we had produced during our first stay in Baden Baden in terms of its structure: it also gave each of us the chance to write something individually and then edit it collectively. When we moved away from this way of working together we experimented with a decentralized way of giving tasks to each other that could produce first ideas/material, which we could then work with further. Each of us became both a “slave” to somebody from the group and a “master” to somebody else from the group. The masters could delegate tasks to their slaves like for example “develop an idea for costumes that could work collectively”. This was a nice playful exercise but it didn’t bring us much further in terms of developing our work. The different results did not come together – it seemed a bit random. Later, the group began to really struggle on an interpersonal level, too. It did not seem possible to become a collective and we discussed the option of splitting into different subgroups. In the end however, we tried to confront ourselves with the trouble we had had and incorporate it into the work. This was done in the reflection we had on the whole process of working as a collective that we expressed in the mindmap that became part of the installation. Despite the complicated work relations at the opening in Baden Baden we were able to celebrate together. We found a weird kind of collective joy in assuring each other that “we would never work together again”. This was the hilarious climax of the whole process.

Your site of performative congregation - the swimming pool - and your gestures of being together in the water as a group choreography is not unfamiliar to the Baden‑Baden context and its infamous spa culture. How did the particular city of Baden‑Baden influence your process (if at all), from our initial Gathering through to the Exhibition?

We did think about water and steam in relation to Baden Baden. Also with regards to our experience at the spa that we had visited the first time we were there. Actually, the topos of water only reappeared in the work because we were looking for fun. Out of all the coaching options aqua aerobics just seemed to be the most entertaining one for all of us. Maybe that is a kind of common ground that can make collective work work if you agree on a basic level of fun. The choice of the GDR-style socialist building where the pool was located seemed like an interesting response to Baden Baden’s South-West German poshness. Somehow we were intrigued by the insecurity/instability of our bodies in the water and the sense of connectivity this element would place between them. Even if our choreography seems harmonious at times it is quite visible how there are different levels of security with regards to our moving in the water. We are struggling in different ways but as we try to join together in a formation we start to affect each other and drag each other down/lift each other up. In the end, we did not know whom we meant when we said we.