Dance researcher/performer Maroula Iliopoulou follows the research process of Ingrid Berger Myhre in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Read her text and follow the journey!
Since Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is currently undertaking a renovation, their collection has been dispersed across neighbouring institutions, under the title ‘Boijmans Next Door’. That being said, Dancing Museums collaborative European Project has been on the move as well.
During the local residencies for the Dancing Museums Project, I followed the appointed choreographer, Ingrid Berger Myhre, at three different institutions in Rotterdam: the Maritime Museum, the Museum Rotterdam and the Kunsthal. Curious about how a choreographic residency especially within a museum environment can unfold? Navigate yourself through the local choreographic residencies of the Dancing Museums Project to follow the journey.
Museum Rotterdam: invitation practices & audience participation
The third week of the local residency for the Dancing Museums Project took place at the Museum Rotterdam and coincided with the launch of the new exhibition ‘Rotterdam’s Studio Secrets’, which is part of Boijmans Next Door. In parallel with the residency, there was an opportunity for Ingrid Berger Myhre to meet with the curator of the new exhibition and view parts of its set-up procedure.
What strikes me most about following the process of Ingrid during the project, is her commitment and sensitivity to acknowledge and understand the context of the location (Museum) each time and accordingly always finding ways to adapt and transform her practice in a responsive manner.
The History of the City, one of the permanent collections at the Museum Rotterdam, is exhibited in a room which shares transparent-glass walls with some offices of the Gemeente Building. Therefore, the visual capacity is possible by both sides. Utilising this opportunity, one of the practices that Ingrid decides to focus on this week is to experiment on the feasibility of making an announcement for an intervention. She explores forms of invitations towards a visitor to participate on a specific task. For one of the compositions, they worked with cups on a version of a quite familiar and recognisable game with the small ball conjuring trick.
This game proved ideal as an appraisal to interact with someone from afar and in that case from the offices of the other building. It is easily read from distance and it requires a short amount of time for the participant to invest on. These interactions provided useful insight on the potential invitation strategies and formats which can be voluntary and accessible. The repetition of the same object offers a rest for the eye and revealed a choreographic potential, which gave room to a variety of experiments and a desire of developing languages/systems that apply in different forms.
