What roles do proximity, distance and physically being together play in relation to social bonds, and to making people comfortable with difference? Tania Bruguera and Richard Sennett’s respective work explores ideas of what it means to live as neighbours and the value of physical bodily experience in creating relatedness. This conversation will highlight how these themes inform Bruguera’s Turbine Hall Commission.
The Hyundai Commission will be in the Turbine Hall from 2 October 2018 to 24 February 2019.
Biographies
Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera (born 1968) is a Cuban installation and performance artist. She lives and works between New York and Havana, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions. Her work is also in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana and Tate. Tania Bruguera engages with 'the role of emotions in politics'. Her main concerns are institutional power, borders and migration. Her work spans performance, events, action, film, installation, sculpture, writing and teaching alongside site-specific works. Often, she sets out to cause change through her work. She calls this approach Arte Útil (useful art), in which people engage as users rather than spectators.
Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett has written about social life in cities, changes in labour, and social theory. His books include Families Against the City, The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, Authority, The Corrosion of Character, Respect, The Culture of the New Capitalism, Together, The Craftsman, and Building and Dwelling. He has had a public career, first as founder of the New York Institute for the Humanities, then as President of the American Council on Work. He has served as a consultant to various bodies within the United Nations and created Theatrum Mundi, a research foundation for urban culture, whose board of trustees he now chairs.