Allora & Calzadilla made their first collaborative work in 1998 with Charcoal Dance Floor at Luigi Marrozzini Gallery in San Juan. It was a charcoal drawing of dancers on a disco floor drawn realistically from an aerial perspective onto a grid of 40 wooden panels.
Read MoreTheir work usually involves some aspects of the relational or social, focusing on geopolitical or ecological issues. Their complicated research-based practice is especially interested in the relationship between sound and U.S. militarism. To do this, often a wide range of technical expertise is involved for the production of sculpture or installations.
Their most spectacular work is probably the outdoor performance Allora & Calzadilla created for the 2011 Venice Biennale outside the U.S. Pavilion. Part of the Gloria exhibition, Track and Field presented a 60-ton British military tank, belly up so that its rotating tracks turned a treadmill placed on top, and functioning so that eight members of the American Olympic squad could train in front of a large audience.
Another humorous work was a low-key performance successfully made into a video. Returning a Sound (2004) mocked U.S. military marching bands by attaching a raucous trumpet to a motor scooter's exhaust, loudly squawking as it was driven around Puerto Rico's Vieques Island, once a U.S. naval base.
