Grand Openings (since 2005) is a performance collective that consists of five different commitments - the New York based Japanese performance artist Ei Arakawa, the painter / musician / writer Jutta Koether, the gallerist / artist / singer Emily Sundblad, the curator Jay Sanders and the composer Stefan Tcherepnin. Their performances were shown in Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Bumbershoot 2008, Seattle, MUMOK, Vienna, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2006, Nigata and Performa05, New York. The components of their performances are recognizable – people, action, ceremony, but the essential quality underlying the group work is difficult to pin down, vacillating between constructed and formless, authentic and absurd. The boundaries of the event do not constrain – they encourage art and life to pass in and out of one another by pure osmosis, which implies suggestions on boundaries of collective actions and communication and possible modes of subversion of those limits within today’s condition of identitarian politics.

picture credits:
Group Affinity, 2011. Installation views Kunstverein München e.V., 2011. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V., photographs by: Ulrich Gebert