Portuguese artist Vasco Costa and German artist Wolfgang Obermair developed a collaborative project in three parts, that operated through the cultural investigations of Alan Lomax. Lomax makes a relation between human behaviour and cultural expression in his studies program known as Choreometrics; a study of dance as formalized, culturally conditioned communicative behavior that he undertook together with the choreographers Irmgard Bartenieff and Forrestine Paulay in the early 60s. Starting from there, Costa and Obermair crossed Lomax´s theories with their own artistic approach to urban life and politics, based on their walks through the city of Vienna. The titles of the three parts of the project are mapping the everyday movements as defined by Lomax.

Pt 1, UP AND DOWN In the first part of their collaboration Costa and Obermair created a vertical and horizontal structured environment in which the audience found itself in a court room assembled out of mattresses, ladders, and ancient political philosophers. Two big display boards with the sculptures of Herodot and Xenophon captured in their natural environment in front of the Austrian parliament, which were under renovation. Around the neck of Herodot the workers placed a rope to fix a shade in the hot summer sun. In the exhibition the ladders suggest an access to the principles that are meant to rule democracy.

The second part of the collaboration invited the audience to watch a 40 minute basketball performance. The visitors could view the game from the outside in a cinematic situation, while listening to the audio track of “Screening Room”, a 1975s TV program, in which Alan Lomax introductions to his theory of choreometrics are alternated by excerpts of his film “Dance and Human History”. In the performance, the narrated movements of the dancers in the film were replaced by the live action of the basketball players.

Pt. 2, SINGLE-UNIT HUNTER STYLE Beach Boys like bus drivers conveying a school picnic; they look happy and responsible, while the passengers are having a ball. Exaggeration of the head is the new thing, almost pecking. Thrusting, poker-faced, basically Arcticstyle is only slightly African. Trunk is one unit. Very simultaneous movement, jerky, linear, simple reversal. Low in variation. Low in luidity. Steady, fast tempo. (Alan Lomax)

Pt 3, THE QUIET MIDDLE BODY THE QUIET MIDDLE BODY is an environmental situation dedicated to the artists interpretation of a spiral movement. It is an attempty to set up an ethnographic shamanic scenery full of inter-subjective moments. An installation of different things: rugs, clay, a rotating platform in the middle, full of stuff, touched by a cloth on a tripod. Candles are lighting the room. The audience were invited to put their head in a piece of cold clay and leave a cast of their forehead. The installation is a reference to Alan Lomax’s passionate side, which goes beyond standard scientific research.