Apr 19, 2005

Live Still Life

In 2003 EASA was held near Kalø in the Danish countryside and Kasper, Mikkel and I had been Hijacked to tutor the Magic Village-workshop. We wanted to have "time" as an underlying theme in our task of making the campsite more "magical" and to introduce this to our participants we made this little installation in advance. An almost classical "still life", "nature morte" - a wonderfully selfcontradictory subject.


lille stilleben 2

The decay is far from "still", though time takes it's toll differently on different matters. It was there for the 14 days EASA lasted, a nice little study in life and death, the passing of time and the longevity of some modern agricultural products and the opposite.


lille stilleben

There's two weeks between these pictures. We'd wanted to keep and dry the tablecloth - as an auto-drawing, a recording of the EASA-time which had elapsed. Unfortunately it turned out to be so extremely discusting, especially as a result of the maggots which had eaten the chicken from within, that our hangovers the last day couldn't cope with it.

Also unfortunately - we weren't prepared for how difficult it was for our participants to understand the greatness of our idea. What a shame, but now we know that you can't leave anything to chance (allmost). But we liked it.

More photos can be found here.

5 comments:

tara said...

That's a shame that people didn't get it... it's a beautiful and labyrinthine concept. Maybe if you'd used a big leg of beef or rump steak instead of chicken . . . ?

Might have been nice (and somewhat bizarre visually) to have had vast photographs suspended in wire or wooden frames, planted in the ground throughout the field, taken of the 'still life' each day in its various stages of decay, so that spectators could digest the frozen moments (which is what most art is) in the context of the living [dying ;)] moment, a blurring and fusion of life and art, life as art (art as life). . . could get some great images maybe of the cows eating the vegetables (presuming that is why som many disappeared) :)

tara said...

o, they didn't disappear at all . . . would have been a great image though ;)

adam said...

Interesting idea with the pictures of the process - that will be taken up if we ever make it again. And we might very well do so.

And no, the cows didn't eat anything - they were blocked by an electrical fence which is difficult to see in the pics. Strangely though, the chicken weren't taken by a fox or the bread and fruit eaten by birds?!? Only animals to interfere was the maggots...

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pics, Adam! And a fantastic idea. I completely missed out on the installation on the spot, though...I think I was having too much fun. Can one have too much fun? I might've come close to succeeding.

Your blog is just pøøørfect!!! Has given me great joy for many days now. Makes me miss you happy people ;)
*a

adam said...

Hi Anni - so glad you like this blog... and what a shame you didn't see our stilleben live. But I understand you - there's so much going on on EASA...