les presses du réel

D.I.E. NowThe True Story of John Webber and His Endless Struggle with the Table of Content

Keren Cytter - D.I.E. Now
Keren Cytter's choreographic performance.
Published on the occasion of the performance of Show Real Drama, this monographic publication concentrates on a performance Keren Cytter developed for If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to be Part of Your Revolution's edition on Masquerade (2008–10). The publication focuses both on the development of this performance and on the working process within D.I.E. Now, the dance company that was established as a result of Cytter's collaboration with the performers.
Catherine Wood contributes with an essay that situates the performance in the context of the history of international dance; Cytter presents a selection of gestures from the choreography of the performances; and performers Andrew Kerton and Dafna Maimon contribute short essays that offer insight into the different stages of the performance on tour. The True Story of John Webber and His Endless Struggle with the Table of Content was presented in an international tour that traveled to Tate Modern (2009, London), Performa (2009, New York), Hebbel am Ufer (2010, Berlin), Van Abbemuseum (2010, Eindhoven), and Tramway (2010, Glasgow).
Keren Cytter (born 1977 in Tel Aviv, lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin) is an Israeli visual artist and filmaker.
Her topics often include love stories, violence, sex and murder. She applies a non-linear narrative, the stories often shot with a hand-held camera. The actors—amateurs and friends of the artist, but more recently professional actors—switch roles with each other, or read their stage directions out loud. Scenes are repeated, but with a different course of events, with voiceovers or alternative dialogues. The films are usually set in simply-furnished apartments, especially the kitchen regions, suggesting a connection to kitchen sink realism. The literary tone of the dialogue, however, is far from realistic. “Instead the films are deliberate hybrids between seemingly incompatible genres, between home videos and auteur films in the spirit of the French nouvelle vague, between Dogme and docu-soap or sitcom. But her films are above all existential dramas about the human condition, about love and hate in our thoroughly medialised age" (Magnus af Petersens).
Keren Cytter has rapidly established herself internationally as one of the most interesting and unique artists on the contemporary art scene. At the mere age of 33, in the last years she has produced more than 50 video works, written three novels and an opera libretto, started the dance and theatre company D.I.E. Now, won awards and is the darling of the art press. Her critically acclaimed film works and drawings have been exhibited in leading institutions throughout Europe and North America, including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), the Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). She has also participated in prestigious international exhibitions such as the 9e Biennale de Lyon, Manifesta 7 (Trento), the Yokohama Triennale of 2008, and the Venice Biennale 2009.

See also Poetic Series (edited by Keren Cytter); Keren Cytter Does Not Like to Share – A one-sided account by Mathilde Supe.
Edited by Frédérique Bergholtz and Maaike Gouwenberg.
Contributions by Catherine Wood, Keren Cytter, Andrew Kerton, Dafna Maimon.

Design by Maureen Mooren.
 
published in December 2012
English edition
24 x 33 cm (hardcover)
36 pages (color ill.)
 
19.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-943365-25-2
EAN : 9783943365252
 
in stock
D.I.E. Now D.I.E. Now D.I.E. Now D.I.E. Now D.I.E. Now


 top of page