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AND YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF (AGAIN) |
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JACOB FABRICIUS
Most days people act as you expect them to act in urban environments, but sometimes we act and appear differently. When this happens the changes often pass by unnoticed.
Things around us change. Or we change things around us.
Sometimes these small, everyday changes take your mind into another reality, a stained reality.
To some people a new reality only lasts for a split second, but to others situations and actions may change the perception of things. Like a small word puzzle.
I am thrilled when I experience something, where I do not know what I am experiencing, no matter if it is planned to be that way or not.
When I notice stained realities I try to think about the situation, to solve it, to sudoku it – to get the meaning or system out of the given visual changes. Often changes and urban puzzles can not be solved, they will just exist – as you pass by – and remain as a small visual treasure or verbal pleasure in front of the viewer.The experiences that last 30 seconds driving by a billboard in Los Angeles (did it really say that, did I really see that, should I drive around the block again?), seeing a living ‘la Rambla’ sculpture two kilometres away from its ‘supposed’ environment or walking by a couple arguing.
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| Leopold Kessler. Diplom, 2004 |
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Split seconds.
Changes that may wake as many feelings as the ones that are created over time. Small changes out of place are good. Small stains in everyday life are good. Small incidents where you ask yourself (again) …
Art in public spaces can have the same effect, sometimes subtle, yet razor- sharp moments, or political, and sometimes senseless and funny.
Now and then I wonder how people experienced Valie Export’s Tapp und Tast Kino (Tap and Touch Cinema) in November 1968, how weird it must have been to look at the people putting their hands behind the curtain, ‘visiting the cinema’ (a woman’s body was the screen) for five minutes…. or think about what the New York bus driver must have thought when Adrian Piper stepped into the bus with a piece of cloth in her mouth in her 1970 Catalysis VI performance.
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Pawel Althamer. Kapcie (Slippers), 2004 |
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What would I have said if I had seen David Hammons’ odd snowball Bliz-aard Sale display in a New York street in 1983? Would I even have looked at this guy selling snow balls? Would I have bought one out of pity? Would I have seen him as a homeless trickster with a funny twist? Well, I wasn’t there, so there is no use in speculating any further.
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