Against the backdrop of the progressive disappearance of the border between leisure time and labour time under semio-capitalism, in this exhibition Hora traces a series of historical references that make explicit how the management of leisure time in ‘productive’ terms is a preoccupation that emerges with modernity.
She looks at the institutions and associative forms that began to proliferate in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century (mainly in central Europe)
and the way the modern state made it possible for people to meet outside working hours. Three focal points of her research are the Vereine (the root of the word Kunstverein), Schrebergärten and Turnplätze [1] – all of which imply the possibility of combining cultural and recreational activities with the educational, the civic and the political.
The time and space of the exhibition are articulated by seven sculptures – translations of sports equipment and the Tangram set itself – which produce a sort of potentially performable and functional gymnasium where two videos and one performance are also presented. These videos and the performance were realized in collaboration with choreographer Claudia Tomasi and the male voice choir of Völs am Schlern, an association from the South Tirol.
If on the one hand this setting appears to favour collective forms of exercise, on the other it implies that ‘logic of competition’ which, to paraphrase the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s Alienation and Acceleration, is intrinsic to both sport and economics.