Backwards (Antwerpen)
2018
William Forsythe
These texts are integrated into the park benches. William Forsythe invites you to walk a certain number of steps away from the bench, and then come back and sit down backwards with your eyes closed. Give it a try. It’s not that easy, and that’s just the point. The artist hopes visitors will connect with each other in this way, and in doing so seeks to contribute to the museum as a meeting place.
Details
- Plan number: M08
- Zone: Human Nature
- Title: Backwards (Antwerpen)
- Creator: William Forsythe
- Date: 2018
- Material: wood, steel
- Acquisition: donation by Middelheim Promotors
- Object number: MID.B.657
Modern ideas about progress see human development as the acquisition of more and more knowledge and capabilities. So, what does it mean to go backwards and resume our starting position, as called for by this artwork? Do we then lose something, or can we also gain?
American dancer and choreographer William Forsythe has been increasingly active in the visual arts since the 1990s. His “choreographic objects” direct the viewer. He explores how we move through time and space, how instructions work, how we build knowledge through our bodies, and how kinship and empathy emerge in that process.
From the same artist
William Forsythe
At the museum’s main entrance, visitors immediately stumble across a work of art. A stone slab with an engraved text is embedded in the threshold of the entrance. The artist asks us to pause and reflect on the museum’s threshold. He asks us to walk in as if we mean it—but how does one do that, enter with conviction? What does that look like? What convinces us? What is our purpose in entering the park?
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