alexandra bachzetsis
1974, Zurich, Switzerland
Alexandra Bachzetsis is a choreographer and visual artist whose practice unfolds at the intersection of dance, performance, the visual arts and theater, generating a conflation of the spaces in which the body, as an artistic and critical apparatus, can manifest. This fundamentally interdisciplinary approach is reflected in her educational background. She studied and graduated the Liceo Artistico in Zurich, Switzerland, (1990-1995), the Dimitri Schule in Verscio, Switzerland, (1995-1997), the Performance Education Program at the STUK Arts Center in Leuven, Belgium (1997-1999), and then continued to post-graduate level, studying choreography and performance at Das Arts, the Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies Centre in Amsterdam (2004-2006). During these years of training, Bachzetsis began to work as a dancer in the contemporary dance and performance context, collaborating with Sasha Waltz & Guests, Berlin, and Les Ballets C. de la B., Ghent, Belgium, among others. Collaboration, transference and a plurality of voices and bodies have informed Bachzetsis’ work ever since and is often thematized as a method of developing new work in her practice.
Much of Bachzetsis’s work involves choreographies of the body, focusing on the ways in which popular culture provides source material for gesture, expression, identification, and desire as we continually create and re-create our bodies and the way we identify through them. Within this, she scrutinizes the mutual influence between the use of gesture and movement in “popular” or “commercial” genres on the one hand (online and social media, fashion, video-clips, television, etc.) and in the “arts” on the other hand (ballet, modern and contemporary dance, photography, performance, and so forth). For Bachzetsis, the relationship between these varying forms and genres produces an inquiry into the human body and its potential for transformation. Ultimately, the way we all perform and stage our bodies and ourselves – through stereotypes and archetypes, through choice and cliché, through labor and spectacle – is a question that continues to shape the work of Bachzetsis.
Bachzetsis lives and works in Switzerland.
notebook: denim, 2023, press image, photo: diana pfammatter
notebook: mermaid porn, 2023, video stills
notebook: sophia the robot sees her feflection for the first time, 2023, video still
2020: obscene, 2022, performance and video installation. onassis stegi, athens, photo: pinelopi gerasimou
2020: obscene, 2022, performance and video installation. onassis stegi, athens, photo: pinelopi gerasimou
2020: obscene, 2022, performance and video installation. onassis stegi, athens, photo: pinelopi gerasimou
chasing a ghost, 2019. photo: mathilde agius
chasing a ghost, 2019. photo: mathilde agius
chasing a ghost, 2019. photo: mathilde agius
escape act, 2018
escape act, 2018
escape act, 2018
an ideal for a living
images of the performance at centre culturel suisse
paris, 2018
an ideal for a living
images of the performance at centre culturel suisse
paris, 2018
an ideal for a living
images of the performance at centre culturel suisse
paris, 2018
private song, 2017
performance at documenta 14, athens
private song, 2017
performance at documenta 14, athens
private song, 2017
performance at documenta 14, athens
massacre: variations on a theme, 2017
images of the performance at moma, new york
massacre: variations on a theme, 2017
images of the performance at moma, new york
massacre: variations on a theme, 2017
images of the performance at moma, new york
private: wear a mask when you talk to me, 2016
private: wear a mask when you talk to me, 2016
private: wear a mask when you talk to me, 2016
from A to B via C, 2014
performance view from mexico city, 2014
from A to B via C, 2014
performance view from mexico city, 2014
from A to B via C, 2014
performance view from mexico city, 2014
gold, 2004
performance at kurimanzutto, mexico city, 2014
gold, 2004
performance at kurimanzutto, mexico city, 2014
gold, 2004
performance at kurimanzutto, mexico city, 2014
the stages of staging, 2013
performance view from basel, switzerland
the stages of staging, 2013
performance view from basel, switzerland
the stages of staging, 2013
performance view from basel, switzerland
etude, 2012
performance view from basel, switzerland
a piece danced alone, 2011
performance view from zurich, switzerland
bluff, 2009
performance view from zurich, switzerland
dancing, 2009
with participation of students of rietveld academy
amsterdam, the netherlands
dream season, 2008
performance view from zurich, switzerland
this side up, 2007
in collaboration with julia born
performance view from london, united kingdom
this side up, 2007
in collaboration with julia born
performance view from london, united kingdom
handwerk, 2005
performance view from amsterdam, the netherlands
show dance, 2004
performance view from brussels, belgium
show dance, 2004
performance view from brussels, belgium
murder mysteries - same difference, 2004
in collaboration with danai anesiadou
brussels, belgium
perfect, 2001
performance view of antwerp, belgium
installation view notebook: mermaid porn, 2023, kunst halle sankt gallen. photo: e. sommer
installation view obscene: 2020, festival move, centre pompidou, 2023. photo: hervé véronese
installation view 2020: obscene, 2022, kunsthaus zurich, zurich, 2022, photo: franca candrian
installation view an ideal for living, centre culturel suisse à paris, 2018
installation view massacre: variations on a theme, the museum of modern art, new york, 2017
installation view from a to b via c, museo jumex, 2014.
Since Bachzetsis started working independently in 2001, she has created over 30 pieces, which have been shown in theaters, festivals, and public space venues around the world. In addition to this, her work has been exhibited in a variety of contemporary art spaces and museums, including Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023), Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland (2022), the Art Institute of Chicago (2019), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013 and 2015), Tate Modern, London (2014), Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2014), and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2008), among others.
Her work 2020: Obscene premiered its theatre version in November 2021 at the Gessnerallee in Zurich, while the exhibition version was shown for the first time in a solo exhibition in spring 2022 at the Kunsthaus Zürich. Bachzetsis presented her piece Notebook at the Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen in 2023 as an installation that reviews, challenges, and expands her artistic methodologies of the past two decades—produced in collaboration with various conversation partners. On the occasion of the exhibition, Bachzetsis’s monograph Show/Time/Book Book/Time/Show was published, edited by Hendrik Folkerts and designed by Julia Born. Currently, Bachzetsis has been invited by the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm to collaborate on a new piece. This act study, Exposure, reveals elements for performance in endurance, transforming static concepts of power into an empowering language of intimacy. The work will be premiered in September 2024 in Sweden.
Bachzetsis has also participated in a number of international biennials and large-scale exhibitions, such as documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, Germany (2017), the Biennial of Moving Images, Geneva, Switzerland (2014), (d)OCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012), as well as the 5th Berlin Biennial (2008). Bachzetsis was nominated for the DESTE Prize (2011) and is a laureate of the Migros Kulturprozent Jubilee Award (2007), the Swiss Art Award (2011 and 2016), and the Performancepreis Schweiz (Swiss Performance Prize) (2012).
Read the full article on how performer Alexandra Bachzetsis proposes a new "framing" in order to deconstruct traditional and contemporary cultural codes at the Art Viewer.
This performance investigates fluidity and permanence via the body, identity, the moving image and performance, challenging definitions of physical, emotional and psychological relationships.
In her choreographies, performances, videos and sculptures, Alexandra Bachzetsis examines how contemporary media culture inscribes itself in the body. The core of her exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) consists of her latest body of works Escape Act (2018). Bachzetsis picks up stereotypical ideals of body and behavior spread by mass media and treats them by means of persiflage.
Pioneer Works presents for the first time in the United States the performance Escape Act by Alexandra Bachzetsis.
Alexandra Bachzetsis creates a poetic device that allows the viewer to "perceive" the technical and socially constructed dimensions of desire. The piece gathers seven living bodies and a multitude of objects that connect and disconnect to form different desiring machines.
In private there are Oriental drag queen dances, gym and western yoga exercises mutating into football and porn poses, stock moves from theatrical training for advertising and the repetition of Michael Jackson’s rituals by teenagers. There is Trisha Brown transitioning into Rembetiko, and a single voice fighting to survive national and gender identity social theaters.
