COSE SCRITTE CAPITOLO 4

This performance aims to create a living art object that changes its form every year and moves throughout over time. The performance begins in a room where, on each wall, there is a writing hanged. These four printed sentences are the names of the four natural elements: air, water, fire, and earth. Under each writing, there is a table with piles of paper and pens on it; alongside the table is a box and a paper-press. The public is invited to write a memory, a thought, or any other sentence about each element and stick their papers into the equivalent box. When every box contains approximately one hundred papers each, four volunteers are chosen by the audience. The performance assistants will instruct these four volunteers on how to press these pieces of paper using the four paper-presses to create four bricks. Once the four paper bricks are placed on a table in the middle of the room, a random member of the audience will receive a brick as a donation. Thus, the sculpture will always remain incomplete. Furthermore, when the performance is over, a voice will read a description of the artwork just created and explain its particulars. Finally, the sculpture will be exhibited as a finished piece of art alongside some legal documents. These documents are meant to oblige the sculpture’s buyer to acquire the missing piece of the sculpture (previously donated to a random member of the audience) and sell one of the other three elements of the sculpture at his or her will. The owner will be obliged to repeat this action every year in the future, annually changing the bricks that comprise the artwork and rearranging them in different ways. In this way, this sculpture made of thoughts will move thanks to the trade (commerce) in the bricks, and it will change its form every year. It will move and get old like a living creature. The missing brick will have a fixed price of 200 euros. Every year, the contract and a photo of the sculpture in its current form will be displayed on the wall nearby, and all the documents and photographs that have been collected will ultimately compose its biography.