Exhibition

14 January–25 February 2007

Alone Again (In the Likeness of Life)

Althea Thauberger, Zivildienst ≠ Kunstproject, 2006–2007, video still

The works by Althea Thauberger contain social and political allegories with an almost purist and vivid visuality. This is one of the post-conceptual characteristics of contemporary art practices in Vancouver, of which Jeff Wall or Stan Douglas are also representative. What is distinctive, however, is that Thauberger’s practice involves an intensive collaborative working process with a group or community that usually results in a musical or choreographic performance and its video, photographic, and/or audio presentation.

The performances of specific groups—very often of youth or adolescents—shown in Thauberger’s works have a dramatic, theatrical quality, accentuated by (un)natural settings. In spite of the eccentric formal charms of these performances, they nonetheless have an alienating effect. Viewers often remain puzzled about the contradictory display of vulnerability and empowerment in the performances. Being “together” in a quasi-collective form can be both liberating and constraining, and here the individual is confronted with the political possibilities of togetherness as well as by its limitations. “Alone again in the likeness of our life” is where Althea Thauberger leaves us.

From 14 January until 25 February 2007, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst presents Alone Again (In the Likeness of Life), a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Althea Thauberger. The opening takes place on Saturday 13 January 2007 at 20.00 hrs. Alone Again (In the Likeness of Life) is Althea Thauberger’s first solo exhibition in Europe. The exhibition presents five video and audio works by Thauberger, all of which are made up of collective performances, the result of her collaborations with various groups and communities.

BAK and De Appel jointly invite you to attend. A performance program takes place in the context of the project If I Can’t Dance… Part II (Feminist Legacies and Potentials in Contemporary Art Practice) at De Appel in Amsterdam between 13.00 hrs and 19.00 hrs, followed by the opening of the exhibition by Althea Thauberger at BAK at 20.00 hrs.

Publications

newsletter
Althea Thauberger: Alone Again (In the Likeness of Life)

Program

conversation
06.02.2007
Althea Thauberger: Alone Again (In the Likeness of Life)

Suggestions from the archive

Sint Maarten Parade

22 October–10 November 2023

BAK at the Sint Maarten Parade 2023

For Sint Maarten Parade 2023, Tools for Action—a non-profit organization that develops artistic interventions for political actions—collaborates with Utrecht-based members of Filipino, Caribbean, and other communities to collectively dream a parade compartment.

Panel Discussion

30 September 2023, 16.30-18.30

To the Other Side of the Concrete Wall

A book launch and panel discussion reflecting on the Jina Uprising, one year after its beginning.

Saturday, 30 September, 2023, 16:30–18:30 hrs at BAK, basis actuele kunst, Utrecht Organized by Jina Collective, a Netherlands-based feminist, leftist, anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, and pro-LQBTQIA+ action group that emerged from the Jina Uprising. This event launches a book of translated essays, co-published with BAK, which include some of the first English translations of texts by journalists […]

Public Program

09 September–29 October 2023

To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023)/Public Program

To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) involves a hybrid off- and online sequence of conversations and screenings around discursive and artistic interventions that reimagine the social implications of watching the war through ways that disrupt, subvert, resist the media’s incessant spectacularization of war.