JocJonJosch _

phone: 0041 76 434 84 46e-mail: info@jocjonjosch.com

JocJonJosch is the Swiss-English collective of Joschi Herczeg, Jonathan Brantschen and Joc Marchington.

As a collective of three artists JocJonJosch are interested in issues of identity relating to the individual and the group both on a universal as well as a more self-reflective level. The individual and the community, success and failure, efficiency and waste, purposiveness and pointlessness, are features of the collective’s work that at different times become tangled and ambiguous. These oppositions represent a reference point in the process of making new work and what interests the artists is how that journey can evolve through a symbiotic relationship of conversation and creation.

In JocJonJosch’s work sculpture becomes a kind of tool of alchemy, which is designed to evoke imaginary journeys in the mind of the viewer. The purpose of the sculpture is not as an ending but instead to open up possibilities by making suggestions of what might have been and what may still be. As with Worstward Ho it is unimportant whether a voyage has been embarked upon or whether it is imagined, what matters is not the destination but the voyage itself.

Untitled Leather Band SeriesSculpture after a Performance2014 _

Untitled Leather Band Series take their form from the stress that the three members of the JocJonJosch collective apply to them through physical pulling or pushing movements; a performance that generates a physical trace from the often intangible and internal tensions experienced by working collectively. The sculptures are a kind of hardening of the ideas invoked by the performances and respond to the temporariness of those actions, often embodying a sense of futility.

Untitled 1 & Untitled 2, installation shot, Ausstellungsraum Klingental, 2014

Ouroboros Large scale performances 75 paricipants / 30 min2013 / 2014 _

Ouroboros takes the shape of a cell like organism, formed of human figures in constant flux, invoking ideas of ‘searching’ in the context of the human condition and drawing on Borges’s image of The Library of Babel.

Through simultaneous forward and inward movements Ouroboros sets in motion an agitated journey without any fixed ending.

The 2014 V&A, London performance of Ouroboros was the first outside of Switzerland. The work was originally performed as part of the JocJonJosch: Hand in Foot exhibition for the Manor Prize 2013 in the Valais Art Museum, Sion, Switzerland.

Untitled, performance site, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2014

Existere BookPublication 90 pages / text & illustrations2012 _

This book performs two roles. In the first instance it documents a performance that took place nine months before it’s publication. However, it also represents a work in itself, a type of anti-monument that is shaped by the immateriality of the original performance.

The publication collects written memories from performers, visitors, curators and art writers as well as drawings and imagery from artists and architects who experienced the performance.

The Existere performance was a living sculpture that took place on three dates in July 2011. Instigated by JocJonJosch and in collaboration with one hundred and twenty volunteers the performance formed a ‘shelter’ made of naked human bodies.

The ‘shelter’ was held together in an endured brace, before inevitably coming apart, pausing and reforming.

The performance was intentionally not documented by photography or video, a decision that has led to extensive reflection and interest in the project. Writer and curator Dr. Jo Melvin conducted an interview with JocJonJosch in March 2012; the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) worked with the artists to host a panel discussion based on the performance in May 2012; the White Review published the transcript of the ICA discussion in September 2012; Art Licks published Rye Holmboe’s text on the performance in October 2011.

Existere Book, publication, 2012

Untitled Running Walking JoggingPerformance / 40 paricipants / 90 min2014 _

JocJonJosch directed 40 untrained performers to take part in this performance as part of the .perf infiltrations 2014 event in Geneva.

People travel circularly, some walk others run or jog. Beneath this mass movement a code operates amongst the participants, which regulates the speed and distances at which people travel. What materialises is a kind of collective algorithm.

The link beneath will direct you to a webpage which shows a visual interpretation of the performance in the form of a coded algorithm and which serves as documentation of the event.

Weblink to online algorithm:www.jocjonjosch.com

Untitled Performance, Halle Nord, .perf- infiltrations, 2015

RollingPerformance / 6 paricipants / 45 min2013 _

Rolling was performed repeatedly for 45 minutes at different points of the day over the opening three days of the JocJonJosch: Hand in Foot exhibition in the Valais Art Museum in Sion 2013.

Five untrained performers roll their bodies in synchronisation along the central hall of the old prison. On top of them they carry the weight of another, who is transported in this way up and down the length of the hall.

Rolling is part of a body of work that negotiates JocJonJosch’s understanding of the ‘collective’ as a paradoxical entity, bound together by perpetual oppositions. In this performance the physical discomfort experienced by each of the individual performers, in rolling over the hard stone floor, is set against the collective need for coordinated movement.

Ancien Pénitencie, performance site, Museé d’art du Valais, 2014

Worstward Ho and EddyPlywood, chestnut and oak2013 - 2014_

The round boat with three oars is symbolic of the collective’s dynamic, in which Joschi, Jonathan and Joc wrestle towards a destination. There is a sensethat each time one member attempts to move forward his movement and the direction in which he would like to travel is countered by the action of the other two.

It is an exhausting exercise and the collaborators often feel as if they are going nowhere, that they are turning in circles.

The boat is a useable sculpture, that is to say it is a boat built to be rowed on water. It’s significance however, is not in any specific journey that the artists take or plan to take in the boat but instead in the ambiguous and challenging journey that it suggests.

Eddy, installation shot, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2013

Worstward Ho, installation shot, Travistock Place, 2013

Head to Head Series Performances and videos 2014 _

In the Head to Head series JocJonJosch attempt to fix themselves in a position that will hold their collective weight. The sculptural arrangement of the three bodies in Head to Head is held in place only by the painful pressure exerted by each head. What binds the collective together is as enabling as it is disabling, and what is hard to distinguish is success from failure, or vice versa.

Head to Head,Time, 2min 4sec,2014

Weblink to video:https://vimeo.com/104194015

Video:

Head to Head, C-Print, 2014

Hanging on, C-print, 2014

Dig Shovel Dig Series Performances / 3 - 6 hours2014 / 2015 _

In Dig Shovel Dig each of the three artists dig their own hole in the earth only to fill the hole of another. The process of digging and shoveling rotates until JocJonJosch eventually give up. What remains are neither three obvious holes in the ground nor three equally filled pits. The three patches of disturbed earth represent the destructive and productive impact, felt by each of the artists, in working together.

Dig Shovel Dig, Aldeburgh,white silver gelatin print, 2014

Dig Shovel Dig, Aldeburgh, black and white silver gelatin print, 2014

Dig Shovel Dig, Video, Ardez, 15min 2 sec, 2013

Weblink to shortened video:https://vimeo.com/84424263

Video:

White ElephantInstallation 2014 _

JocJonJosch’s collaborative practice is confronted with conventional notions of failure and success but their question is whether these distinctions or judgements are useful in understanding art objects. It is part of a process that leads the collaboration to more questions, rather than answers and endings.

The White Elephant is a statement of the ambiguity in how we perceive failure and success.

The concept of the White Elephant is extended to the treatment of the photograph itself. The picture is an unfixed print which requires special care. As a result, it is suggested that the print is shown under a red ‘safe light’ protecting it from white light and further development.

White Elephant, installation shot, Museé d’art du Valais, 2014

White Elephant is an unfixed black and white photo-graph.

To protect the image from white light and further devel-opement, the 360cm x 300cm print was installed in the upper most room of the museum, in this large black box with especially fitted red ‘safe lights’.

White Elephant, installation shot, Museé d’art du Valais, 2014

White Elephant, installation shot, Museé d’art du Valais, 2014

Performance ArtistsPerformance / 3 hours2012 _

JocJonJosch’s interest in this work lie with the ambiguity of perception and specifically in the distinction between the audience and performer. They examine where that divide exists, when and how it forms, who is who and how an encounter between the two is experienced.

By staring at each other (Joschi at Joc, Joc at Jonathan, Jonathan at Joschi), the three form a discreet but definite triangular connection identifiable by their physical positions in the gallery. The exclusive connection between Joschi, Jonathan and Joc might or might not be recognised by gallery visitors as they walk between them and through the unphysical connection.

The significance is not so much for each visitor to recognise the presence of this interconnection but instead, if they do encounter it, how this happens and what effect this has on the viewer, the performer and the group as a whole?

Performance Artists, iPhone images, Saatchi Gallery, 2012

Beast Mutation SeriesVideo installation2014_

In this series of video and print work entitled The Beasts, JocJonJosch continue their explorations of what it means and feels like to work as a collective.

The Beasts show Joc Marchington, Jonathan Brantschen and Joschi Herczeg entwined in a series of monstrous embraces. Each mutated beast that is born from the swallowed individuals is central to their extended investigation of collaboration.

Since forming as a group in 2008 JocJonJosch have continued to question the contemporary idyll for working in collaboration. This is demonstrated by their intimate working relationship as it evolves through an arduous, at times uncomfortable and disabling, set of events.

The Beasts are part of several internationl collec-tions:

Caldic Collection, The Hague, NLAnna Mahler Foundation, Spoleto, ITMusée d’Art du Valais, Sion, CH

Beast Mustation Installation, installation shot, Bieler Fototage, 2014

Joschi Herczegb. Basel, Switzerland, 1975

2001 - 2002 The University of New South Wales, Sydney, AU MA, Photomedia

1999 - 2000 Staffordshire University, Stoke on Trent, UK BA, Hons Photography

1994 - 1996 Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, CZ GraduatedinpartnershipwithStaffordshireUniversity

Joc Marchingtonb. London, England, 1976

2007 - 2008 Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, UK Postgraduate Diploma Motion Graphics

2003 - 2004 London College of Communication, London, UK Magazine & Publishing Design

1995 - 1998 Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK BA, Hons History of Art & Anthropology

Jonathan Brantschenb. Fiesch, Switzerland, 1981

2007 - 2008 Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK Postgraduate Diploma Motion Graphics

2006 - 2007 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK FineArt(firstyear)

2001 - 2005 Ecole professionnelle des arts contemporains, Saxon, CH BA, Strip Cartoons / Illustration

JoCJoNJoSCH CV_

phone: 0041 76 434 84 46e-mail: info@jocjonjosch.com

SeLeCTeD exHIBITIoNS & ReSIDeNCIeS

Dec 2014 Dienstbebäude, Zürich, CH Group exhibition ‘Catch of the Year 2014’ Nov 2014 .perf – infiltrations, Geneva, CH PerformanceSept 2014 Art Licks at the V&A Friday Late, London, UK Ouroboros performanceSept 2014 Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel, CH Group exhibition ‘Vanishing Point’Aug 2014 Bienne Festival of Photography, Biel, CH Beast Mutation ExhibitionAug 2014 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK Worstward Ho! Jun 2014 Forum Wallis, Leuk, CH Group exhibitionMar 2014 Parasol Unit, London, UK Screening and performanceFeb 2013 Weiss Galerie, Zürich, ch Exhibition and conversationNov 2013 Musée d’art du Valais, Sion, CH Prix Manor Sion 2013Oct 2013 Art Licks Weekend, London, UK Rowing ‘Worstward Ho!oct 2012 Saatchi Gallery, London Performance & auction of Untitled #1, 2012 July 2012 Fondazione Aurelio Petroni, Naples, IT ResidencyMay 2012 The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK Born In 1985

May 2012 Institute for Contemporay Arts (ICA), London, UK Panel discussion on JocJonJosch’s Existere performanceDec 2011 Peckham Hotel, London, UK Performance and video eventoct 2011 TINA B. Prague Contemporary Art Festival, Prague, CZ PerformanceJuly 2011 Testbed1, London, UK ExistereJuly 2011 Son Gallery, London, UK Existere at Son GalleryMay 2011 Galerie Monika Wertheimer, Basel, CH Agreements of CollaborationMar 2011 Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, IT Finalists of the International Arte Laguna PrizeJan 2011 Son Gallery, London, england, UK Exercises in FailureDec 2010 Situation 1, Ferme-Asile, Sion, CH Une exposition collectiveoct. 2010 The Anna Mahler Project Space, Spoleto, IT The BeastsAug 2010 Son Gallery, London, UK The BeastsJun 2010 Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Summer Exhibition 2010May 2010 Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, UK ICA Live WeekendsMar 2010 CHELSEA Space, London, UK 5th anniversary Exhibition

LeCTURING &WORKSHOP

Shih Chien University, Taipei, TWLecture / workshopeCAV - ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais, Sierre, CHWorkshopEPAC - Ecole professionnelle des arts contemporains, Saxon, CHWorkshopChelsea College of Art & Design, London, UK Visiting lecturerLondon South Bank University, London, UKAssociate lecturerBuckinghamshire New University, Buckinghamshire, UKAssociate lecturer

CoLLeCTIoNS & AWARDS

Mai 2015 Soho House, London, UK CollectionJan 2014 ArtPro, Sion, Wallis FundNov 2013 Manor Collection, Geneva, CH CollectionMai 2014 Kunstsammlung Kreis Spital, Brig, CH CollectionNov 2013 Prix Manor 2013, Sion, CH Swiss Art AwardOct 2013 Bernard Soens and Mimi Dusselier, Waregem, B CollectionAug 2013 Caldic Collection, The Hague, NL Museum VoorlindenSept 2012 Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK Special book collectionsJuly 2012 Arts Council England, UK Artists’ International Development FundJune 2012 Tate, London, UK Special book collectionJune 2012 Chelsea College of Art & Design library, London, UK Special book collectionsDec 2011 Kunstsammlung der F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, CHApr 2011 Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain, CH / UKMar 2011 Arte Laguna, Venice, IT Special Prize “TINA B”Dec 2010 Förderpreis des Kantons Wallis, CH FCD-Collectionoct 2010 The Anna Mahler International Association, Spoleto, ITFeb 2009 Radiological Institute, Basel, CH