Joschi Herczeg, Jonathan Brantschen and Joc Marchington.
I have been very pleased and proud to have performed in four of their performance works: Existere (London 2012), Ouroboros (Sion 2013, London 2014), Rolling (Sion 2013) and Untitled Running Walking Jogging (Geneva 2014).
I have learned so much from these guys - not just about art and performance and the process of making performance, but about how to behave with openness and generosity and humour and intent.
Without JocJonJosch - and Adam James, who I was connected with thanks to JocJonJosch - I don't think I would have achieved a fraction of what I have (for what it's worth). Happy memories. Hopefully not the last ones to be made.
Untitled Running Walking Jogging
Performance / 40 participants / 90 min
2014
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JocJonJosch directed 40 untrained performers to
take part in this performance as part of the .perf
infiltrations 2014 event in Geneva.
People travel circularly, some walk others run or
jog. Beneath this mass movement a code operates
amongst the participants, which regulates the
speed and distances at which people travel. What
materialises is a kind of collective algorithm.
The link beneath will direct you to a webpage
which shows a visual interpretation of the
performance in the form of a coded algorithm and
which serves as documentation of the event.
Weblink to online algorithm:
www.jocjonjosch.com
Ouroboros
Large scale performances
75 participants / 30 min
2013 / 2014
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Ouroboros takes the shape of a cell like organism,
formed of human figures in constant flux, invoking
ideas of ‘searching’ in the context of the human
condition and drawing on Borges’s image of The
Library of Babel.
Through simultaneous forward and inward
movements Ouroboros sets in motion an agitated
journey without any fixed ending.
The 2014 V&A, London performance of Ouroboros
was the first outside of Switzerland. The work was
originally performed as part of the JocJonJosch:
Hand in Foot exhibition for the Manor Prize 2013
in the Valais Art Museum, Sion, Switzerland.
Rolling
Performance / 6 participants / 45 min
2013
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Rolling was performed repeatedly for 45 minutes at
different points of the day over the opening three
days of the JocJonJosch: Hand in Foot exhibition in
the Valais Art Museum in Sion 2013.
Five untrained performers roll their bodies in
synchronisation along the central hall of the old
prison. On top of them they carry the weight of
another, who is transported in this way up and
down the length of the hall.
Rolling is part of a body of work that negotiates
JocJonJosch’s understanding of the ‘collective’ as
a paradoxical entity, bound together by perpetual
oppositions. In this performance the physical
discomfort experienced by each of the individual
performers, in rolling over the hard stone floor,
is set against the collective need for coordinated
movement.
Existere
2012
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The Existere performance was a living sculpture that
took place on three dates in July 2011. Instigated by
JocJonJosch and in collaboration with one hundred
and twenty volunteers the performance formed a
‘shelter’ made of naked human bodies.
The ‘shelter’ was held together in an endured
brace, before inevitably coming apart, pausing and
reforming.
The performance was intentionally not
documented by photography or video, a decision
that has led to extensive reflection and interest
in the project.
A book was subsequently produced that 'in the first instance documents a performance that took place nine
months before it’s publication. However, it also represents a work in itself, a type of anti-monument that is shaped by the immateriality of the original performance.