Cally Spooner, “On False Tears and Outsourcing” – dancers responsible for delivering self-organized efforts to resolve difficult and time-consuming issues “go the distance” across multiple overlapping phases using appropriated competitive strategies and appropriated intimate gestures, 2015. Installation view: Vleeshal Markt, Middelburg, the Netherlands. Courtesy Vleeshal Markt, Middelburg, the Netherlands. Photo: Anda van Riet

The New Museum holds a new installation “On False Tears and Outsourcing” by Cally Spooner, which will be her first solo and institutional presentation in the United States. She has just finished her solo exhibition at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and in 2014 Frieze Film has commissioned her to make a project that was screened in the auditorium at Frieze London 2014.

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It comprises a series of architectural additions to the gallery space and the presence of a group of dancers who will respond to conflicting choreographic instructions: to stay intimately bound together while remaining fiercely separate.

Trained by rugby players and a movie director, and following the logic of a “stand-up scrum” — a daily meeting often used in collaborative, responsive practices such as software development — the dancers will learn a set of techniques taken from contact sports, management strategies, and on-screen romance. Through this intersection of bodies and architectures of management, Spooner will examine how power presents itself when it comes into contact with the human body.

“On False Tears and Outsourcing” is part of Spooner’s long-term project of the same name, which was initiated at Vleeshal Markt, Middelburg, the Netherlands, in 2015. Considering the production of affect, the contradictions faced by hired bodies, and the dynamics of using or being used as a human resource, the project stages situations in which a heightened demand for communication drives the outsourcing of personal investment to readymade gestures and protocols.

Cally Spooner “On False Tears and Outsourcing”
Date: April 27th – June 19th, 2016
Open: 11:00 – 18:00 (Thursday till 21:00)
Closed on Monday and Tuesday
Place: New Museum
Address: 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
Admissions: General 16 $, Seniors 14 $, Students 10 $, 18 and under Free
Tel: +1 212 219 1222
https://www.newmuseum.org