1000 Scores

In 1919, Marcel Duchamp sent instructions for an artwork from Buenos Aires to his sister by way of a present. Suzanne Duchamp was asked to source a geometry textbook and suspend it by strings from her balcony overlooking Rue la Condamine in Paris. “The wind had to go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear the pages.”

In Spring 2020, the urge to create instructional performances reached new heights: locked in, with limited social contacts or in physical distance – without a venue like a theatre, gallery, concert hall or club to go to, to meet and exchange, the private environment turns into the place for interaction. In times when meetings are limited and art institutions keep their doors shut, scores become a transdisciplinary artistic practice for connecting people in their isolations and with their surroundings; to keep creating performances by making the audience become the protagonist of pieces that are written for them.

1000 Scores. Pieces for Here, Now & Later is an online performance space that presents new scores from various artists on the website. Each score is an instructional art piece for one person, commissioned by the project, in collaboration between partner institutions and the artistic team.

KANAL-Centre Pompidou is partner and joint producer of 1000 Scores that forms part of the exhibition It Never Ends. The historic association of John M Armleder and his performance collective ECART with the Fluxus movement ensured that the typical Fluxus process of 'scores' and 'instruction art' was included in the mainstream performance programme of It Never Ends through projects such as Scores for the Body, the Building & the Soul by David Helbich and Safety Measures by Tim Etchells. By commissioning five artists to contribute to 1000 Scores we have now added a digital dimension.

As the pandemic is still present, causing new lockdowns all over Europe, new scores will be published regularly on the website and spread into the world.

Scores commissioned by KANAL-Center Pompidou

• Tim Etchells – Ten Phrases
• Ula Sickle – Score for Nght Travel
• Radouan Mriziga – 0.5COR35
• David Weber-Krebs – After Lunch (a prayer)
• Yasmina Reggad – those that do not shall be cursed
• Tim Etchells – A Call in Relation to Fear