Maria Hassabi(2015-2021) – Secession catalogue

Maria Hassabi(2015-2021)

Published on the occasion of HERE, a live installation by Maria Hassabi.

Commissioned by Vienna Secession and Wiener Festwochen,

Co-produced  by Onassis Culture, Athens and OGR- Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Torino.

colored, hard cover, 200 pages

The live installation HERE invites visitors to share time and presence with six dancers. During the month-long exhibition, six dancers will perform a choreography that unfolds at a decelerated pace within a sculptural environment. The movements of the performers will be backed by a sound composition, a female voice counting every passing second, from 1 to 14399, underlining the eternal succession of time. Immersed in this constant continuum, the dancers’ movements create a situation of everchanging presence unveiling the slippery nature of the “here and now.”Since the early 2000s, Maria Hassabi has created a unique choreographic practice focused on stillness and the empty space in-between movements.In her works, the artist takes cues from conventions, hierarchies, and codes common to theater, museums, and public spaces, which she then reworks to reflect the given contexts and develops in dialogue with a site’s unique architecture. At the core of Hassabi’s choreographies, stillness and deceleration are used both as techniques and as subjects of representation, while the performing bodies oscillate between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image.