The setting of This Here and That There is a shallow pool. The artist makes simple, repetitive actions using several dozen of chairs which she arranges in different ways. They portray fleeting, arbitrary relations between our bodies and their surroundings. The subtle choreography provokes contemplation and looking from a distance at one’s own position in the physical space, but also in society – in relation to other people, when we are in a crowd or alone facing ourselves.
Vlatka Horvat’s performance metaphorically comments on the need to create new orders in the fluid and unstable world. The performance length – 8 hours – refers to a standard working day which, nevertheless, as the artists points out, is rarely that short in a modern-day world. The audience watch the action from a distance above the pool – thanks to which they can embrace the whole ever changing composition.
Vlatka Horvat
Vlatka Horvat is a Croatia-born artist, working across a range of modes and contexts, such as sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, and text. Her projects often focus on re-arranging or reconfiguring objects, built space and social relations at play in it, by staging the human figure in a precarious relationship with her surroundings. Vlatka studied Theater and Performance Studies in Chicago and holds a practice-based PhD from Roehampton University in London. After 20 years in the US, she currently lives
in London. Her work has been presented extensively, e.g. at the 11th Istanbul Biennial, the Kitchen (New York), Disjecta (Portland), STROOM (den Hague), MoMA PS1 (New York), among others. Her work in visual art is represented by Zak| Branicka (Berlin), annex14 (Zurich), and Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York).