Cally Spooner

Evolved over long periods of time, across a variety of venues, her work incorporates duration and rehearsal as acts of resistance to the emergence of ‘performance’ as both a regime of power, and a condition of daily life, in which it is hard to tell the difference between what is alive and what is dead.

Cally Spooner’s most recent solo shows include Fifty Billion Hectares of Time, gb agency, Paris (France), 2021; Dead Time, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, (Belgium), 2021; Dead Time, The Art Institute of Chicago, (USA) 2019; Sweat Shame etc., Swiss Institute New York, (USA) 2018; Everything Might Spill, Castello Di Rivoli, Rivoli, 2018; Drag Drag Solo, Contemporary Art Centre Geneva, (Switzerland), 2018.
As part of Deadtime, an opera in development over several years and presented in different stages, Cally Spooner offers two new works, a soundtrack for the Forum-1, and a live choreography. Together these can be considered a live rehearsal for Deadtime’s repertory, in which living and mediated bodies, not always human, appear and reproduce, both vital and cadaverous. Alternating between dynamic moments then phases of stasis, the choreographic work On Stagnation sees three dancers cull sequences from USA home fitness regimes that grew in sync with neoliberalism. With accelerated movements slowed to a BPM lower than a human heartbeat, the routines stutter and stall into slowed moments producing then a dead time, which seems stretched yet vibrant. Alongside, a soundtrack for the room plays the sound of ratings and rankings counted, while a musical composition appears to form, only to undo itself back to its beginning, in a state of constant preparation.