Container Series
Containments, Contained
Alan Schacher
About the work
What is a container when employed as a site for performance? It can be a frame, a window, a stage, a gallery, or a home, a vessel for containment or exposure. It may hold objects, spaces, or metaphorical histories. In Containments, Contained, the container becomes both site and collaborator, shaping and constraining the artist as he works to fill it, shift it, and inhabit it.
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This performance places Alan Schacher in dialogue with the evolving materials and the architectural limits of the container. He balances, stacks, rearranges, suspends, shoves, and slides cardboard, MDF, plywood, perspex, and corflute boards to construct temporary self-surrounding structures. The work unfolds as a deconstruction and reconstruction of space, where the body becomes the measure of possibility, simultaneously surrounding and surrounded.
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The performance is self-challenging and improvisational; outcomes are not pre-determined, and the artist’s interaction with the materials continuously transforms the installation. Containments, Contained invites audiences to witness the precarious tension between human agency and material resistance, exploring the aesthetics of struggle, balance, and spatial negotiation.
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The title references Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s 2001 work Surroundings, Surrounded, echoing themes of spatial awareness, perception, and relational dynamics.
About the artist
Alan Schacher
New South Wales, Australia
Based in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Alan Schacher is a performance and installation artist whose work investigates the confluence of site, materials, bodies, and histories. His practice explores architectural experience, landscape, and the global diasporic condition, employing matter and objects to transform space and unsettle conventional perception.
Schacher’s early career included Sydney’s seminal performance ensembles Gravity Feed (1992–2004) and Gravity Research Institute (2000–2019), where he developed dynamic, task-based choreographies and immersive performance environments. Today, he participates in international performance art events—particularly across Asia—using simple materials, repetition, and site-responsive gestures to investigate spatial energy and leave traces of presence.