Screening:
Paternos­ter Square

Pablo Bronstein
Video installation, 2008
February 10-12, 12.00-20.00
SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema

The video installation Paternoster Square, 2008, presents Paternoster Square, next to St Paul’s Cathedral in London as a stage set for a performance. The stage is comprised of three architectural objects designed by Bronstein and Berlin-based architect Etienne Descloux. Simultaneously filmed from different angles, ballet dancers are observed responding to live direction by Bronstein, off-camera, but audible, dictating when a pose must be held, changed or improved. The dancers create compositions with poses taken from classical ballet, George Balanchine and baroque ‘sprezzatura’ iconography – the art of elegant bearing, in solo and group configurations derived from early court ballets. The dancers attempt to act as idealized, ornamental citizens within the square, which is presented as a model of ‘public’ architectural space where a form of citizenship is performed that in turn relates to an historical ‘classical’ use of public space.

The installation by Bronstein is presented in the series of events that will take place in the Walk-in Cinema and Auditorium to expand on the ideas and content of the exhibition Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914.

Pablo Bronstein (b. 1977) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Sculpture Court Commission, Tate Britain, London; Interim Event Commission, Chisenhale Gallery, London; Pablo Bronstein at the Met, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cabinet of Curiosity (permanent commission), Nottingham Contemporary, England. In 2010 he participated in Manifesta 8 and the Bucharest Biennale 4.

* This work is usually shown as a four part video installation, but the artist has kindly agreed for it to be shown in three parts in the Walk-in Cinema.

Courtesy the artist and Herald St, London