(LA)HORDE in digital mourning

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents the second event of the Public Program devoted to Neïl Beloufa’s exhibition: a performative project conceived by the French collective (LA)HORDE, at the direction of the Ballet national de Marseille, in dialogue with the artist. The exhibition “Digital Mourning” becomes the stage for a reflection on the relationship between idealisation and material (hyper)reality, constantly shifting between offline and online.
The three jumpers Magali Casters, Edgar Scassa aka Edx and Kevin Martinelli aka MrCovin will “inhabit” the exhibition space for three hours with jumpstyle movements, a dance style part of Hard dances such as hakken and shuffle, and born in the 2000s clubs in continuation of the Mainstream Hardcore Dutch movement. In the recent years, this subculture has spread through social media, especially TikTok, and influenced an increasing number of people through video recordings and dance tutorials. The Jumpers – as those who practice this form of dance are called – will position themselves in various points around the show and perform brief sequences of movements in front of their own device: dancing and filming oneself in front of the mirror of the camera can be considered as part of the process of a “post-internet dance”. The rhythmic sequences will be recorded and shown in digital format on the museum’s social media channels.
The public will be able to enjoy the exhibition under the usual circumstances, with the chance of occasionally coming across moments of performance that reconfigure the Jumpers’ bodies as new works of art. During the event the film Novaciéries (2015, 16’43’’) will be screened, a project by (LA)HORDE that mixes cinematographic images shot by a movie crew but also performance captations with the cast of the film and homemade videos made by the interpreters themselves shared on YouTube and other social platforms. Novaciéries is a combination of cinema, performance, and home video that transcends dance films and presents a choreographed and metaphysical portrait of the post-industrial world.