New Museum
New York
235 Bowery
212 2191222 FAX 212 4315328
WEB
Wim Delvoye
dal 24/1/2002 al 28/4/2002
WEB
Segnalato da

New Museum of Contemporary Art


approfondimenti

Wim Delvoye



 
calendario eventi  :: 




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.


comunicato stampa

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

IN ARCHIVIO [108]
Jim Shaw
dal 6/10/2015 al 9/1/2016

Attiva la tua LINEA DIRETTA con questa sede