Walk the Chair was devised specially for the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition Move: Choreographing You (South Bank Centre, London, 13th October 2010 to 9th January 2011). The performers in this participatory work are the gallery visitors themselves, plus a gaggle of La Ribot’s signature folding wooden chairs. Running over each chair’s surface is a quotation. To decipher it, the chair must be unfolded, upended, twisted and twirled in space. Visitors thus become performers for one another as they puzzle over the chairs’ inscriptions.
When she was first invited to take part in the Hayward’s hybrid art-dance exhibition, La Ribot took Pina Bausch’s 1984 piece Café Muller as a point of reference and devised a plan to “invade” part of the gallery with a crazy thicket of folding wooden chairs: a kind of obstacle course for gallery visitors. Later this plan gave way to the concept of “readable” chairs: fifty chairs “branded” with quotations etched into their backs, legs and seats with a poker-work tool. The quotes’ overarching theme is movement, but they also reflect on participation and spectatorship. Individuals quoted range from Isadora Duncan to Ludwig Wittgenstein, and while some quotes are very short (Wittgenstein: “Don’t look for the meaning, look for the use”) others are extensive and offer curious visitors a serious choreographic work-out.
A handful of quotes also smuggle in factual information about folding chairs. “Foldable, light, popular, cheap and strong”, La Ribot classes the wooden chairs used in Walk the Chair as “treasure”. They first appeared in her 1985 piece Carita de ángel and they form an essential presence in many subsequent projects. Made by a now-defunct Madrid factory, they are no longer in production, hence she has stockpiled several hundred for future use. A cheerful, familiar presence for the artist, these rickety, treacherous-looking objects also serve to agitate audiences: most viewers’ nerves must surely be wracked by the sight of La Ribot poised precariously on one whilst bent over, straight-legged and head downward, in Hacia dónde volver los ojos (Distinguished Piece No. 10, 1994), for example. In Walk the Chair, however, they serve the more benign function of extracting impromptu performances – including the simple act of sitting and spectating – from their handlers.
Installation of 50 Chairs, Wood and Metal
Comissionned by Hayward Gallery - London, UK for the exhibition Move : Choreographing you / Created La Ribot Thanks to Kumiko Kuwabara, Ewa Fontaine, Rares Donca Clémentine Küng Pablo Lavalley, Christophe Khim, Quentin Simon, Marine Magnin and Gilles Jobin, . La Ribot Cie is supported by Pro Helvetia, République et Canton de Genève, Ville de Genève - Département de la culture– Geneva (Switzerland) and had the support of SEACEX (Spain).
Exhibition PER/FORM curated by Chantal Pontbriand
– CA2M
Pablo Lorente