The art meets dance in the living capsule of Alexandra Pirici at Art Basel

Alexandra Pirici & # 39; s Aggregate (2017-19) is "one of the most powerful performances I've ever seen," says curator Cecilia Alemani, who presented the work at Basel's Messeplatz this week. "The performance environment" choreographed by the Romanian artist and performed by more than 60 dancers occupies a domed pavilion in front of Art Basel four hours a day until Saturday. Designed for the first time for the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in 2017, the work was taken over in a former Buenos Aires plant as part of Alemani's program for the first week of Art Basel Cities last September.

Pirici gained international recognition in 2013 for Intangible retrospective of the Venice Biennale, a collaboration with choreographer Manuel Pelmus for the Romanian pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale. Using only their bodies, the performers cited more than 100 works of art from the history of the Biennial, from Picbado Guernica (1937) on the wax work of Pope John Paul II, hit by a meteor, in 1999 by Maurizio Cattelan.

The directory of dancers in Aggregate extends beyond the canon of fine arts, mixing references to the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo David with hand signals used by Occupy activists, a fragment of the Bollywood film and the song of the extinct bird. Pirici describes this selection as a "purely subjective" interpretation of the Golden Record, the time capsule of images and audio clips on life on Earth that NASA launched into space in 1977 aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 probes.

As for the gold disc, the work reveals "the need for the human species to externalize knowledge," Pirici explains, but also seeks to "challenge and deconstruct" the power structures. implicit in the selection process. Pirici's more diverse time capsule includes works by non-Western artists and masterpieces, as well as music by Rihanna and Bach. There is no hierarchy between the interpreters, so everyone is free to initiate a collective action in the moment – a format that rejects "the idea of ​​value badociated only with the". A singular, unique and exemplary object or subject, "says Pirici.

In this respect, the logic of Aggregate goes against many of the largest dollar sales of art produced inside the show. The contrast is not lost for Pirici, who claims to appreciate Art Basel's "artistic / political" decision to treat performance as "something equally valuable, worthy of its own place and attention". The work is free for all, including during the VIP opening days. According to Alemani, it's for sale, but Pirici is not represented by a gallery and "to be honest, it's really hard to sell performative works."

Locked in an igloo-like structure designed by Andrei Dinu, the project has a "strange, almost UFO-like presence" on Messeplatz, says Alemani. Visitors entering the pavilion may not realize at first that they are now part of a living landscape. The dancers wear ordinary clothes and gradually envelop the audience "with very subtle gestures or placement in space, which can sometimes be very soothing, but may also involve a slight tension," says Pirici.

Rather than being a "recognition game," the work invites each viewer to "propose his own reading" based on his cultural background, says Alemani. None of the shares are announced or reported. So it can take "45 minutes or an hour before you start to see similarities and understand how it works." But whatever the length of your stay, says Alemani, the experience is "completely different each time".

• Aggregate takes place on the 11th and 12th of June from 5pm to 9pm, on the 13th and 14th of June from 4pm to 8pm and on the 15th of June from 1pm to 5pm on the Messeplatz in Basel