VIDEO: The Georgian Pavilion in Venice: The Bouillon Group (kosovotwopointzero.com)

(kosovotwopointzero.com) Religious aerobics by the Bouillon Group create a forum just outside the Georgia Pavilion to see certain rituals performed in a light you might never have imagined before.

The Georgian pavilion is a project constructed by individual artists as well as a collective of artists reflecting upon the different possibilities of contemporary urban architecture and its various means of use and expression. Using the concept of reuse of existing spaces, construction, movements, rituals and objects, the pavilion is an impressive experimental collection of unfinished sympathy towards the unconstructed, the weird, rare and reusable form. During the performance, the artists perform certain aerobics reminiscent of religious, islamic prayer rituals till they bleed, not noticing their bodily limits while ascending into the trance of the religious ritual.

Text: Shelbatra Jashari

Official description of Bouillon Group via the Georgian Pavilion website:

Bouillon Group, artist collective, founded in Tbilisi in 2008. Bouillon Group’s performances, actions and artistic interventions mostly take place in the public realm. They also worked on a series of exhibitions in private apartments referring to the role of private flats during the Soviet Union—often the only space of public debate or exhibition making available, which was not officially supported and controlled. They have taken part in Betlemi-Mikro-Raioni (2009) and Frozen Moments. Architecture Speaks Back (2010), both art projects in Tbilisi curated by Joanna Warsza. They have exhibited with AICA Armenia (2010) in Poland (MOCAK in Kraków and Arsenał in Białystok, both in 2011), and in Germany (GfZK in Leipzig, 2010), among others. The project for Kamikaze Loggia at the Pavilion of Georgia, will continue their reflection on the public and the private, as well as on the religious and the ideological.

Video: Nicolás Matzner Weisner [Spear International]