Play With Food
Vierwände Kunst (4 Walls Art Festival), Düsseldorf, Germany, 2007
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Vierwände kunst (Four Walls Art Festival) is an art festival of all alternative spaces in Düsseldorf, sponsered in part by the Kulturamt (culture department) of the city. The inaugural exhibition occured from September 7 to 9th this year. There were 25 spaces participating in the festival. I was the artist-in-residence at the Ateliers Höherweg e.V e.V during the month of September and I participated in the Festival at the space at Ateliers Höherweg e.V. in addition to four videos of my past performance work, I made a new performance for the festival.
The piece is entitled "Play with Food". At the center of the gallery is a huge table measuring 3m x 6m x 1m high, sloped both upwards and sideways, leading to a net recalling a soccer goal, and in the shape of a pathetic flag. The table is covered with 70 kg of cooked rice. A light shines from behind the 'goal' and casts a strong shadow of the performer and a large ball (70cm in diameter) on the table. The sound of a soccer match between Germany and Argentina with commentary in German permeated the room. The performer(myself) was dressed in black and engaged in a Sisyphean act of eating the rice off the giant ball and pushing the ball uphill towards the goal. The ball was constantly escaping him and the performer relentlessly pursued the ball.
The performance ended when finally the ball was pushed unexpectedly through a narrow gap between the goal and the table. It lasted about 15 minutes.
Video clip: (8 minutes with sound) Low-resolution: compressed to .mp4
Hi-resolution Quicktime movie, 161MB)
Press coverage:
NRZ preview
NRZ review
Rheinische Post online
Rheinische Post
Also some links:
vierwände kunst
vierwände kunst - Ateliers Höherweg
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project and my residency is generously supported by Ateliers Höherweg e.V. I would like to thank the artists of the Ateliers for their kindness and generocity. My special gratitude to the director of the Ateliers, Klaus Richter, who had been instrumental in the success of this project. I also want to specially thank Hedwig Rogge and Sohei Hashimoto for their continuous support on many aspects of this project. I also want to thank the China Restraurant Hai Xian, who prepared the large amount of rice for the project, and the Sportamt der Stadt Düsseldorf who let me steal their soccer goal, and Medienzentrum - Technikpool, and Kunstraum Düsseldorf. My thanks also to Reiner Scharlowsky, Franziska von Hasselbach and Florian Kuhlmann for their help in documenting the performance. Last but not least, I want to thank Benjamin Houlihon for his assistance in constructing the giant table.