Tino Sehgal’s extraordinary art comes to Cork. It has to be seen to believe – The Irish Times

It’s 2002 and a couple is kissing at the Guggenheim. Viewing art can create waves of emotion and sometimes love, but it’s unusual to see gallerygoers writhing on the floor in slow motion of passion. Watching the duo in New York feels extreme, voyeuristic and incredibly intimate. Some ignore requests and take photos. Also that year, at the Venice Biennale, a museum guard sings: “This is propaganda, you know you know.” The artist is Tino Sehgal and something new, strange and remarkable is happening. This kiss humanises the long-dead models who embrace each other forever, especially in marble and on canvas, but also sets the couple strangely different – ​​like the art itself.

Nearly 10 years later, the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London is filled with visitors mingling as usual, but suddenly 70 of them turn into a flash mob and begin playing what looks like a running game. If kissing in a gallery is unacceptable, running is definitely off limits. Then one person leaves and returns to talk to a stranger, then another, and another. This time it will be Sehgal’s These Societies, for which the British-born, Berlin-based artist will receive a Turner Prize nomination. Although he did not win that year, he went on to win the Golden Lion in Venice and numerous awards around the world.

I watch at the Tate and wait. I overhear quiet stories being told, sometimes strange, always personal, and I anticipate my turn. But no one comes to talk to me. I’m starting to feel the same way I often do at parties: While I’d rather hang out on the sidelines, I also want to be in the middle of things. This separation of my soul and spirit has never been so apparent, so disturbingly inevitable.

“I’m sorry,” Sehgal says over Zoom today. “Mistakes happen. There’s no real explanation.” Looking back, I try to explain that I didn’t care. The feeling of being suddenly greeted with a profound personal insight was worth it, an unexpected gift from the work of art.

visitors Mushroom Midsummer Festival They’ll have the chance to receive some, perhaps unexpected, sentimental gifts of their own when Sehgal brings one of her extraordinary pieces to City Hall this month. Shown on: Irish Museum of Modern Art At his temporary home in Earlsfort Terrace in 2013, he is excited by the richly contemplative atmosphere of festivals, as well as the subliminal rituals we can now attach to moments like midsummer. Sehgal describes his exhibitions, installations, projects, presentations – whatever you call them – as “constructed situations” that are very difficult to put into words. The artist himself would almost prefer it this way. He doesn’t document his art: There’s no formal footage, no photographs, and he prefers to engage people with things they encounter firsthand rather than reading interviews.

And yet, despite all this, he is worth chatting with: his conversation is fascinating, extremely intelligent, thoughtful, abstract, fascinatingly honest, funny and enigmatic, but never annoying. Talking to him instead is like diving into a slowly flowing river of ideas, never quite sure where it will take you and not really wanting to come up for air. There are pauses as he thinks, and his dark eyes focus somewhere in the middle distance, searching for the right word or perhaps already imagining something completely new. In many ways, it’s like engaging in one of his exhibitions.

“I create live work,” he says. “In the double sense of the word.” He mentions that concerts and theaters are also obviously live, but much of their outcome is already determined when they take the stage. Sehgal prefers his business to evolve “in the moment, with certain parameters, and often with those parameters, and that evolution is thanks to you, the visitor.” I’m reminded of something belonging to the late Roscommon-born artist Brian O’Doherty He said of the process of creating and showing his work, including his string drawings, that the viewer completes them. He once said to me, “There is nothing without you.”

( 62 Irish festivals will be held this summer, from music and comedy to literature and scienceOpens in new window )

Sehgal prefers to quote another Ballaghaderreen-born megastar: James Colemandescribes him as “a dear friend and a role model”, admiring the older artist for, among other things, his fidelity to his process and presentation, whether by avoiding interviews or insisting on how to encounter his work. Part of this, Sehgal says, is to avoid creating objects, or “material residue,” as he calls them. “The most profound thing I learned from James is that you can make something that is not visual art in the classical sense.” Sehgal’s desire to leave no work of art outside the mind and memory insists, among other things, on the fascinating question: Are we interesting, or even valid, in terms of the things we own or the gestures we make throughout our lives?

Growing up in Germany to a German mother and father in what was then British India, Sehgal has an accent that oscillates between German and English, with dots in between. We argue that being completely from one place or another can make you both an observer and a chameleon. Growing up in a town with “industrial production” also distanced him from the idea of ​​producing “things”. This is “where, let’s say, the most materials and things come in and out,” he says, adding, “I don’t think anyone is making an artistic work about something they don’t feel strongly about.”

One source of inspiration came from being a skateboarder when I was young. By transforming stairwells and railings into places to fly, “I understood the idea that you can somehow change the purpose of something… You can transform it with your use.” He also devoured similar books by Taschen. Marcel Duchamp And Yves Klein. He studied dance and economics simultaneously; the latter not to appease worried parents, “I thought I needed to understand this society that is driven by economics… My idea was that if I want to change something in this society, I need to do this.” understand how it works first.” It’s an “art of living project,” he says, with one of those long German portmanteau words.

After the first iterations of his work, I realized how quickly imitators followed. Booths at major international art fairs have, for a year or two, sprouted live mannequins moving in stylized shapes. And even accounting for the fact that an art fair is not a good or kind place to immerse yourself in art, these seemed clumsy and lacking in meaning or moment. What does Sehgal add to include both and more?

He has studies on dance and choreography training, his experience as an artist, and the nature of economy and shopping. The job “didn’t come out of nowhere,” he says. This also stems from his unique vision and deep belief that art can be profoundly meaningful in its effects. “Where does the power of exhibition art or the museum lie?” he asks, emphasizing that artists who may not seem vital now can later define and influence entire periods. “This will remain in the past,” he said; Looking back, we remember artistic movements more than most politicians of the time. He’s optimistic it’s been a “somewhat painful transformation,” he says, and he credits working with young people and his own children, now 14 and 16, for it.

Families, or rather inter-generational bonds of care, feature prominently in the Cork Midsummer Festival exhibition. This is you shown here, National Sculpture Factorycommissioned by Fundación Botín and exhibited Centro BotínIn 2023 in Santander, Spain, art history has been the ongoing theme and inspiration of Sehgal’s work, in response to El Greco’s 1612 masterpiece The Adoration of the Shepherds. This table won’t be heading to Ireland, but what you’ll experience will be a group of participants, including babies, and some of the original team from Spain, with a few Cork additions portraying caring roles across generations.

With choral elements and dance, he has to create something unforgettable and almost indescribable, and that’s one of the reasons why Sehgal prefers to let people experience his work first-hand rather than through interviews, photographs and film clips. “I deliberately chose an environment that is open and open to the interpretation of others; this is part of the meaning of production; I feel like that gap always closes a little bit when you start talking to people. Take my word for it: don’t miss it.

Mushroom Midsummer Festival Valid from Wednesday, June 12 to Sunday, June 23; This Youiiyou by Tino Sehgal opens at Millennium Hall on Tuesday, June 18, and will run until the end of the festival; Admission is free, no reservation required

Festival Picks: Six more shows to see at Cork Midsummer

One Man Theater – This is Ireland: Step into a purpose-built stand and experience your own personal drama as 12 short plays are performed by one actor at a time to a single audience. Landmark Productions and Octopus Theatricals, in conjunction with the festival and Cork Opera House, are highlighting the work of established playwrights who mentor a roster of new writers. See what Iseult Deane, Susannah Al Fraihat, Aoibhéann McCann, Joy Nesbitt, Ois O’Donoghue and Aoife Delany Reade created alongside Marina Carr, Stacey Gregg, Emmet Kirwan, Louise Lowe, Mark O’Rowe and Enda Walsh. Emmet Place, 15-23 June, free and without tickets, queues expected

Night Dances: Celebrity choreographer Emma Martin’s United Fall celebrated dance culture, from clubs to competitions and ceremonies. Expect wild performances and electrifying live music from Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox in this sweaty love letter to dance. Marina Market Warehouse, 13-15 June, 22€/24€

Winter Journey – Winterreise Redesigned: Project Arts Center’s new artistic director and executive director, Sophie Motley, reinterprets Schubert’s song cycle with folk, hip-hop, opera, tradition and more at eight locations in Shandon. Artists in this co-production with Islander and the festival include JFDR, Gavan Ring, Gary Beecher, Lina Andonovska, Outsiders Ent, Neil O’Driscoll, Peter Power, Rachael Lavelle, Ciara O’Leary Fitzpatrick, Johnny McCarthy and Bláithín MacGabhann. Shandon, 15 and 16 June, €22/€24

Property: He works with artist Amanda Coogan, composer Linda Buckley and collaborators Alvean Jones, Lianne Quigley and the Cork Deaf Community Choir. Based on a script by deaf artist Teresa Deevy, this opera combines Irish Sign Language with experimental compositions to tell the story of An Táin through the eyes of Queen Medb. Granary Theatre, 20-23 June, 15€/25€

Tempesta: Inspired by true events, Deirdre Kinahan’s new play features music composed and performed live by Steve Wickham of The Waterboys. Directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull, the film tells the story of two Dubliners caught up in the onslaught of war in 1930s Europe and a whirlwind of love that takes them from the jazz clubs of Dublin to the battlefields of Catalonia. The Pav, 16-23 June, 18€/20€

Wiff Waff Plays at My Gaff: A fondness for table tennis is one of the untold secrets of the art world and Davey Moor hosts impromptu tournaments and commissions creative tables from the likes of Elinor O’Donovan, Ella Bertilsson, Liliane Puthod, Prendergast & Moor, Dáire McEvoy and more. Tanad Aaron and David Lunney. Try your luck at the traditional wiff-waff table (wiff waff is the old name of the game) and check out the tournaments opened throughout the run. Crawford Art Gallery, June 14-July 7, free