Fifty-nine positions

“59 Positions” is a 20-minute video, filmed in 1992 using a stationary camera in an empty, unadorned room with a concrete floor, consisting of fragments of actions each lasting just a few seconds, in which we glimpse the artist Erwin Wurm and his friends bundled up in sweaters, pants and shirts, seemingly oblivious to the usual purposes of these articles of clothing. Their bodies are contorted into ridiculous poses, under the influence of a strange choreography made up of motionless “objects” that tremble almost imperceptibly. Wurm thus aims to explore “whether a physical action can become a sculpture and if so, at what point the transition takes place.” By making use of looped sequences without movement, his aim was to find out if and when this transformation might happen. Wurm was so impressed by the visual force and immediacy of these curious anthropomorphic forms that he decided to create a series of colour photographs based on this video, thus reconnecting with this medium in which he had often worked in the 1980s. After “Self-Portrait as 47 Pickles”, “59 Positions” is the second title in the series of artist’s books by Erwin Wurm published by RVB Books.