Cyprus-born, New York-based artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi creates performance pieces exhibited in a wide range of settings around the world—from the streets of Manhattan, to a sports hall at the Venice Biennale, to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. As bodies navigate these diverse spaces in what sometimes appears to be slow motion—often holding poses with unwavering poise—the spectator finds themself in a contemplative atmosphere, questioning the meaning of the precise movements Hassabi creates, and the paradox of stillness in movement. Here she tells Dapper Dan more about her process and her work.
KIM LAIDLAW: You take your art outside of the parameters of the exhibition space and it cohabits a space with day-to-day goings on—how important is this meeting of public/public space in your work?
MARIA HASSABI: I like shifting the context in which I present my works. It’s appealing to me to consider the unique architecture of each venue and either adapt my work to them, or create a work for a specific site. Another important aspect that always shifts is the meeting with the audience. In each space there are behaviours we carry as members of the public that are directly related to the context and this is a fact. Whether I make work for a theatre, public space, museum or gallery, there is a through-line in what I create. Always present is the sculptural physicality of the body, the stillness we acquire as performers, and the paradox of this stillness, as well as a particular velocity. What shifts are concerns of duration, whether there is a clear beginning and ending, and for sure the approach to addressing the audience. For example, the works I create for exhibition spaces, which I call “live-installations”, in principle have no dramaturgical beginning and end apart from the opening hours of each institution. Right away, this aspect shifts the quality of the work, since there’s no definitive arch in its duration. Museum visitors often come upon the work without expecting it. Some neglect us; others get intimidated. Others allow themselves to get involved and even be touched by our proposal.
In theatre spaces, we tend to treat the audience as one body, as you cannot consider each audience member individually. Yet, in the theatre space, there’s a raw intensity that feels sometimes as if the room is shaking—perhaps due to the enclosed space of the black box. This abstract intensity gets diffused and spread out in larger spaces, such as museums and public spaces. However, there’s another sort of intimacy that occurs here directly related to the setup: often the performer is not aware when a visitor will pass by them, for how long they will stay and look, or how the visitor will choose to behave. The viewer can choose to come very close to the performer: at some moments you feel like you’re performing for only one person.
KL: You have previously said that your interest is asking people to look at things, question them and reconsider them—could you tell me more about that?
MH: I’m interested in creating platforms that offer plenty of time, both to the viewer and the performer, to see and to be. Time to notice, to contemplate, to even drift away. With the decelerated velocity of my work, nuances that are usually dismissed become the centre of the work. The viewer can notice physical reactions in the performer that are beyond any pre-conceived choreography, reactions that are undefined, even uncomfortable, and that thus highlight the richness of a human being in a raw and unspectacular way.
KL: Your performances often seem to be in slow motion—this paradox, as you say, of being about movement and yet being so still. It makes me think of Bill Viola’s films, where the slowness of movement is very much related to painting.
MH: I initially developed this particular sculptural approach to physicality due to my interest in images and a curiosity about how I could support images in live performance. I never think of my work as being in slow motion—slow motion implies slowing down a recording that would normally go faster. For me, the slow pace is directly related to what I want, as it’s integral to the bodies as both images and physical beings. It’s about paring things down and trying to stay with what is essential, what is really indispensable in what we already have. When I start to pare things down, I start to see what’s going on and to understand what we’re doing. Usually, with this process, very few things are left, so every detail that survives becomes a clear, suspended moment. This brings precision and clarity to each action, and that is what makes the physicality appear sculpted. I’m interested in the stillness and the emptiness that result from zooming into all this slowness in a particular frame of mind. As artist Scott Lyall, my long-time collaborator and dramaturg, says: “Insignificant gestures gain the dignity of close-ups. It’s the sculptural miseen- scene that tends to figure these details, where breathing and even stillness can be perceived in dramatic terms.”
KL: What is the relationship between your body and your art? What role does the technical ability of your body, as a dancer, play in your work?
MH: The body is my material. The intricacies and richness of physicality—weight, muscular strain, tension, breath—along with the body’s representations, its relation to time and space, these are the elements I generally work with.
KL: Are you asking the viewer for self-awareness of conditions that apply to them?
MH: If one chooses to slow down, one can begin to notice nuances that are usually dismissed in our fast-paced everyday lives. Slowing down is my invitation to notice the unspectacular aspects of human behaviour, both physical and mental. Slowing down can allow a chance for a different awareness, even a shift in our perception.
KL: You explore the representation of the female body in art history, pop culture and daily life. As a female author of art, who uses their body for their work, how do you feel the representation of the female body is changing?
MH: In the early days I spent quite some time exploring solely the female body through art history and pop culture. What I found pretty incredible is how little the representation of the female body has changed, looking at it from antiquity until now. Maybe this has to do with the fact that most of the authors, be they sculptors, painters or photographers, were usually men portraying an ideal “look” towards women. But even today, when there are plenty of women artists portraying women, the postures have largely remained the same. Even in everyday life our choices of how to posture ourselves are not that different. These were some of the questions I was concerned with back then. Nowadays my focus is rather more widely directed to the human being in society in general, regardless of gender. What I have noticed, especially when presenting my works away from theatre, is that the body is still a taboo unfortunately and some of the reactions we receive from the public are very strong and unexpected. Yet, at the same time, in these spaces the spectator is allowed to behave however they desire.
Originally published in Dapper Dan magazine 12, 2015. Interview by Kim Laidlaw