Wim Delvoye
dal 24/1/2002 al 28/4/2002
Segnalato da
New Museum of Contemporary Art
24/1/2002
Wim Delvoye
New Museum, New York
Cloaca Built from an astonishing array of laboratory glassware, electric pumps, computer monitors, and plastic tubing, Cloaca is an elaborate installation conceived by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye to duplicate as closely as possible the functions of the human digestive system. Designed and built in collaboration with scientists at the University of Antwerp, Cloaca is 'fed' a variety of nutritious meals twice daily. It then chews, swallows, digests, and eliminates.
Cloaca
Cloaca Built from an astonishing array of laboratory glassware, electric
pumps, computer monitors, and plastic tubing, Cloaca is an elaborate
installation conceived by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye to duplicate as closely
as possible the functions of the human digestive system. Designed and built
in collaboration with scientists at the University of Antwerp, Cloaca is "fed" a
variety of nutritious meals twice daily. It then chews, swallows, digests, and
eliminates. The summation of many of the ideas that have informed
Delvoye's art-flirting with prosaic and vulgar materials, and juxtaposing
irreconcilable elements in witty and surprising ways-Cloaca is the most
significant work yet made by this leading member of a new generation of
European artists. Although certainly entertaining, the installation touches on
significant issues such as the impact of biotechnology on cultural
production.
Cloaca was organized by the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp
and is accompanied by an extensive English-language catalogue published
by Ludion. The presentation of Cloaca at the New Museum of Contemporary
Art is made possible with the generous support of the Consulate General of
Belgium and the Flemish Community of Belgium.
What is Cloaca?
Cloaca is a room-sized machine that replicates the human digestive system
on a monumental scale, enabling viewers to witness different stages in the
human body's processing of its food.
Cloaca is an elaborate installation of laboratory glassware, electric pumps,
gauges, and plastic tubing, which must be kept running at all hours of the
day and night in order to function properly.
Cloaca is a performative event, intended to attract visitors across a wide
range of ages and backgrounds for regularly scheduled feedings and
evacuations of the machine.
Cloaca is a tool for bringing art and science closer together, by inviting us to
examine the ways in which we think of our bodies as machines, at the
same moment in our cultural evolution where the separation between real
and virtual has grown tenuous.
Cloaca is an educational enterprise, a giant machine pet that viewers cannot
resist experiencing as an animate creature, one that needs to be fed and
cleaned on a regular basis.
Cloaca is a unique investigation into art history, taking on a range of artistic
precedents dealing with the human body in order to form a new
configuration, based on our contemporary obsession with technology.
Cloaca is a staged public laboratory, requiring regular infusions of chemicals
and enzymes to keep the digestive system functioning, as well as a
constant internal temperature regulated by computer.
Cloaca is a cultural spectacle, bringing together skeptics and experts, the
curious and the shockproof, to ponder the tenuous links between artistic
production and human biology.
Cloaca is a metaphor for a society that privileges the cerebral over the
corporeal, exulting in the latter only when it can be packaged into a kind of
perfection.
Cloaca is a presence operating in the background, slowly breaking down the
components of the food it has been fed, and draining off the valuable
nutrients so that the only thing preserved is the waste.
Wim Delvoye
New Museum
of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway (between Houston and
Prince Streets in SoHo)
New York, NY 10012
Telephone 212.219.1222
Fax 212.431.5328
Press Office 212.219.1222 Ext. 394