with Louis van der Waal
Ich Stecke Fest is a performance piece developed during a week-long workperiod at Werkstatt in Kassel during Documenta 15. Together with other Rotterdam-based artists, I sought to respond and intervene with the situation that presented itself at Werkstatt. One important topic at Werkstatt was replacement of the trashcans. Old, open trashcans were replaced with newer closed ones. A lot of people that came to Werkstatt lived from these trashcans. We designed protest stickers that could be placed on the trashcans.
When looking for trashcans that serve as models for the sticker, I stumbled upon this lost office chair near a skatepark and decided to adopt it. After this I transformed it into an dancing creature to make it perform together with actor Louis van der Waal. What stories can be told by this chair that had no place in the city of Kassel? And what does it mean to give this object a performative space? How does it relate to the other people performing at Werkstatt?
When looking for trashcans that serve as models for the sticker, I stumbled upon this lost office chair near a skatepark and decided to adopt it. After this I transformed it into an dancing creature to make it perform together with actor Louis van der Waal. What stories can be told by this chair that had no place in the city of Kassel? And what does it mean to give this object a performative space? How does it relate to the other people performing at Werkstatt?
Werkstatt is a socio-cultural space in the west of Kassel that originates as a continuation on the work of Joseph Beuys. In 1977, during documenta VI, Joseph Beuys presented an installation called ‘Honeypump at the Workplace’. It was installed around the staircase of the Firdericianum Museum and consisted of a series of tubes running into rooms adjacent to the staircase through which two tons of liquid honey was pumped by a motor. People from all sides of life, politicians, scientists, workers and artists gathered in the building like bees and an hive to share their knowledge an coverse. To continue this meeting, Werkstatt was formed afterwards.
During a period of a week artists from Rotterdam, namely Wolf Engelen, Jip van der Hek, Sachia Pereira Stolle, Fleur Wortman and Werner van der Zwan became residents at Werkstatt to see how they can create a dialogue between their own workspace, Werkstatt and it’s environment. The last weekend socio-cultural workplaces in Rotterdam came to Werkstatt and documenta XV.