Black Flags

William Forsythe, 2014
1949, New York, NY (US) – Frankfurt am Main (DE)

Robots, flags
Courtesy of the artist

Programing: Sven Thöne
Technical Realisation: Max Schubert
Producer: Julian Gabriel Richter

In Cooperation with Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, SKD
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von KUKA Roboter

Dresden, Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, SKD, 2014
Paris, Gagosian Gallery - Le Bourget, 2017

Two industrial robots are programmed to choreographically propel two large black flags with a digital precision conceptually approaching Platonic ideals. The capacity of the machines to provide limitless executions with no spatial or temporal deviation whatsoever, transfers their analog choreographic task into the exceptional territory of the absolute, the super-human.
This is a unidirectional event that precludes a corporeal re-creation if adhering to the parameters and scale upon which the work was conceived, thereby situating the choreography in a sublime, but machinic isolation.