Slow Life
Monday, October 31, 2005
7 p.m. 12 midnight
museum kunst palast
Ehrenhof 4-5, 40479 Duesseldorf
Fon: 0049-(0)211 8996211
Fax: 0049-(0)211 8929504
Christina.bolius [at] museum-kunst-palast.de
An evening with YAEL DAVIDS, WIM DELVOYE, JAN FABRE (Video with Peter Sloterdijk), CARSTEN HÖLLER, GERMAINE KRUIP, LAWRENCE MALSTAF, LINDA MOLENAAR, MERLIN SPIE, BEREND STRIK , KOEN THEYS, KOEN VANMECHELEN and HENK VISCH.
SLOW LIFE is an evening with a dozen young artists from Belgium and the Netherlands who, in various rooms in the museum, will be presenting performances, videos, readings and objets d’art in which living slowly plays a central part. The actions will be taking place continuously (from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.), so that everyone will have time to watch and listen, and also to enjoy slow food.
The Israeli artist YAEL DAVIDS, who lives in the Netherlands, takes everyday objects, such as a cabinet, a chair, a mattress or an aquarium, and turns them into sculptures which do not come to life until a person takes place in or on them. Davids calls her objects “never-ending sculptures”. The Fleming KOEN VANMECHELEN decided to devote his life to raising hens in order to create a “global hen”. His travels have led him to Tanzania or to the Himalayas, for instance, where the primordial hen lives. In his talk, he will provide insights into the results that have been achieved and discuss possible future races of hen. The Brussels-born artist CARSTEN HÖLLER was originally a behavioral scientist. He has continued to pursue his studies using inverting eyeglasses which turn everything upside down. After wearing the eyeglasses for a certain period, however, the brain adapts and reverses the image again.
The video “The Vanitas Record” by KOEN THEYS is the largest vanitas picture in the world, a -sixty minute film in which skulls, books and 20,000 living snails play the leading role. The film, which premiered at the beginning of this year in Belgium, continues the tradition of the old Flemish vanitas paintings and is as spectacular as it is ‘tedious’.
Additional artists who have been invited and take part are: WIM DELVOYE, JAN FABRE (Video with Peter Sloterdijk), GERMAINE KRUIP, LAWRENCE MALSTAF, LINDA MOLENAAR, MERLIN SPIE, BEREND STRIK and HENK VISCH.
The evening takes place in conjunction with the exhibition SLOW ART which shows paintings, graphic and plastic works, as well as video works by Dutch and Flemish artists such as Berlinde De Bruyckere, Marlene Dumas, Rineke Dijkstra, Mark Manders, Aernout Mik, Thierry De Cordier and Luc Tuymans.
