Nina Beier
Clarina Bezzola
Julien Bismuth
Clegg & Guttmann
Cosalux
For Use / Numen
Swetlana Gerner
Josef Loretan
Jan Lotter
Annika Lundgren
Lee Mingwei
Ivan Moudov
Anny und Sibel Ozturk
Paola Pivi
Plural Art Collective
Reactor
Leonid Tishkov
Gavin Turk
Vanja Vukovic
Matthias Ulrich
Desislava Pavlova
The project presents a range of artistic activities in public space, involving the city and its inhabitants. New actions taking place daily, from performances to installations to "guerrilla actions". At the heart of the project lies an intense debate about public space and the "participatory turn" within contemporary art. Around 20 collaborative and participatory works are planned, by Julien Bismuth, Clegg & Guttmann, Paola Pivi, Plural Art Collective feat, Gavin Turk and many others.
Curator: Matthias Ulrich, Assistant: Desislava Pavlova
Following last year’s success, the exhibition project Playing the City 2 once again presents a wide range
of artistic activities in public space, involving the city and its inhabitants in a variety of ways. From 8 to 26
September 2010, central Frankfurt will see new actions taking place daily, from performances to
installations to "guerrilla actions". At the heart of the project lies an intense debate about public space
and the "participatory turn" within contemporary art. Around 20 collaborative and participatory works are
planned, some specially conceived for the project, by Nina Beier, Clarina Bezzola, Julien Bismuth, Clegg
& Guttmann, Cosalux, Christoph Faulhaber, For Use / Numen, Swetlana Gerner, Jördis Hille, Christoph
von Löw, Josef Loretan, Jan Lotter, Annika Lundgren, Lee Mingwei, Ivan Moudov, Anny and Sibel
Öztürk, Paola Pivi, Plural Art Collective feat, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Reactor, Annika Ström,
Leonid Tishkov, Gavin Turk and Vanja Vukovic. In parallel a project office, the "Zentrale", will be set up in
the Schirn’s exhibition spaces, from where the project team will pursue its work in public, fine-tuning the
website, answering questions on the exhibition, and organising and documenting all the activities.
Playing the City 2 can also be followed via the internet, in a digital extension of public space. The
website developed for the project, www.playingthecity.de, assembles all the latest videos, texts and
visual material, an exhibition calendar and a blog, and will also be networked beyond the physical
venues via numerous social media networks. It is thus a catalogue, exhibition forum and platform for
discussion all in one.
Playing the City 2 opens up public space as a collective, free arena that can be moulded, that questions
its boundaries, and that involves its inhabitants. The site-specific actions take place within a time-limited
framework in which they are produced and can be experienced, and in which production and reception
are closely connected. The traditional definitions of a work and of its authorship are negated: both terms
that have been questioned since the 1960s, not least through action art. Many of the works developed
for Playing the City 2 can only be realised through the involvement of the public; whether they are
actions that provoke fortuitous street confrontations or sculptures that invite use. But at the very least
they are intended to create a confrontation and a dialogue with the – sometimes randomly generated –
audience, and to transform public space into a playing field with rules that are tested collaboratively. Can
the public space really be taken as a place of different opinions and voices? What constitutes public
opinion? What do we understand by public space? These are some of the questions raised by the
Playing the City 2 project.
The concept that Playing the City 2 realises, on various levels, is a continuation of the ideas of the major
avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the Dada movement
rejected "conventional" art and art forms as well as bourgeois ideals, taking to the street instead. It is
also worth mentioning Guy Debord’s Situationism, which 50 years later still has a strong influence on the
contemporary art scene, notably on "Public Art", and which has inspired theoreticians such as Michel de
Certeau to define space as a "practised place" and to locate its significance in the activities taking place
within it. The urban researcher Armando Silva argues similarly, differentiating the city into the
architectural fact and a performance consisting of human interactions. For artists of so-called relational
aesthetics, processes such as intersubjectivity and interaction are both the starting and endpoints of their
artistic work. According to Nicolas Bourriaud, the utopian potential in developing artistic spaces in this
way lies in being able to provide alternative forms of sociality, critique and happiness. They have all
turned away from the transformative potential of grand narratives, and instead see opportunity for
change in the direct encounter with people.
Playing the City 2 offers a look into the wide varieties of current participatory and collaborative art: one
large-scale installation by the Austrian-Croatian design collective For Use / Numen fills the architecture
of the Schirn with a walk-in cocoon of transparent adhesive tape. Since the installation can be
experienced and entered, it becomes a fixed component and can be used as such by the inhabitants of
public space. The installation by artist duo Michael Clegg & Martin Guttmann, "Open Debate Station,
Frankfurt", questions the structure and function of public debates. They design a discussion platform
that, through fixed furniture and established rules of play, becomes a place for a public, structured and
fair exchange of opinions. In this work, the two artists refer both to the tradition of Talmudic interpretation
and to the history of the Frankfurt School. The Italian artist Paola Pivi will engineer unexpected situations
on Frankfurt public transport as part of her work: during rush hour, an individual actor first starts to sing a
song, and then gradually – apparently at random – more musicians will join in, singing or playing
instruments, thereby disrupting the everyday situation of a silent trip by bus or tram.
The title of Annika Lundgren’s project, "The Stock Is Rising", is a historical reference to a 1967 action, in
which a group of 20,000 peace demonstrators led by Abbie Hoffmann gathered before the Pentagon in
Washington D.C. and sang loudly to drive evil spirits from the building, as part of a protest against the
Vietnam War. The action planned by Lundgren for Playing the City 2 is a response to the international
financial crisis and will start by publishing information on the website www.stockisrising.com about the
action, about Abbie Hoffman, about levitation as a form of parapsychological practice in which the pure
force of thought overcomes the gravity of objects, and about the financial crisis. On 21 September 2010,
between 15:00 and 17.35, participants in the action will gather in front of the Alte Börse (former stock
exchange) in Frankfurt, and make the building hover. This action will be networked worldwide via the
website.
The remaining actions also use various means and media in order to intervene in urban space (e.g. Nina
Beier, Vanja Vukovic and Julien Bismuth), to question social structures and processes (e.g. Ivan
Moudov), or to set up forms of cooperation and interaction between the artists and the general public in
Frankfurt (e.g. Clarina Bezzola, Lee Mingwei, Leonid Tishkov and Reactor). One important feature of the
actions and activities is their time-limitation: when the project is over, the individual works will be
documented through photographs and film on the website, while their traces in public space will
gradually disappear.
Press office: Dorothea Apovnik (head of Press/PR)
Philipp Dieterich (press officer)
phone: (+49-69) 29 9882-148, fax: (+49-69) 29 9882-240, e-mail: presse@schirn.de
Press preview: Wednesday 8 September 2010, 11.00 AM
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Römerberg, D-60311 Frankfurt, and Frankfurt city centre
Hours: vary with individual projects.
Opening Hours zentrale: Tue, Fri–Sun 10–19, Wed and Thu 10–22.
Admission free.