ART-PRESENTATION: Play

Kortrijk is a nice little town on the Lys River in south-western Flanders, only 7km from France. Founded by the Romans as Cortoriacum, Kortrijk is one of Belgium’s oldest cities. The city was destroyed by the Vikings then fortified in the 12th Century. It then prospered as a cloth trading center during the late Middle Ages. Kortrijk is famous for its Medieval and Renaissance architecture and for being the scene of one of the most famous battle in Belgian history, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, the first time in European history that an army of knights were defeated by an improvised militia.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: PLAY Archive

In November 2017, Kortrijk became a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, a collection of 180 world cities that use creativity as a lever for sustainable development. A year earlier, Kortrijk was officially named a child and youth-friendly city. What’s more Kortrijk was chosen as European City of Sport 2018, thanks to the impressive range of sports it offers, the quality sports events it hosts and its large number of sports clubs. Kortrijk developed a brand new city festival. Under the title “PLAY” is on presentation a series of sixteen outdoor and indoor interventions, undertaken by 40 international contemporary artists. The concept of the project is based on the important scientific publication by Dutch anthropologist Johan Huizinga entitled “homo ludens” (The Playing Man). It is an analysis about the importance of “play” in human evolution which turns people from working persons into more creative and more intelligent beings. Huizinga is not the only scientist fascinated by the analysis of this phenomenon however. Several psychologists and sociologists have followed his example, trying to define the importance and impact of “play” in our society. Heidi Voet presents “When all the world is a hopeless jumble”, the aritst uses crowd-control barriers and prismatic colors as a playful statement on repression, hope, and strategies of resistance. The title of the work alludes to the original opening line of the eminent ballad from the movie The Wizard of Oz, an adaptation of the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The first verse of the lyrics was eventually edited when sung by Judy Garland for the movie. Written in 1938, a moment in history at times compared to the current political situation, the song narrates the desire to be over the rainbow where a trouble free world lies. The grey, galvanized barricades, which are globally employed to control and restrain crowds by police and security forces, are placed in a large sphere. Where usually the barricades limit and restrict, in “When all the world is a hopeless jumble” they become a mischievous demand for freedom, diversity and imaginative play. Martin Creed’s balloon works span different sizes and colours, but always isolate half of the air within a space and give physical presence to something that is normally invisible. Part of a series of balloon works, “Work No. 262: Half the air in a given space” creates a monochromatic sea of bright green balloons that viewers must navigate through. This physical experience often creates a childish joy within the viewer, along with an underlying sense of claustrophobia. For the original presentation of “Casino” on the opening of his exhibition in the V.M.H.K. (1984), Guillaume Bijl worked with two croupiers who provided fictional entertainment on the Blackjack table and the Roulette table. He asked some of his friends to join the game. Later in the game, undercover police officers staged a real intervention and interrogation, because they were convinced it was an illegal casino. The game promises to –just as in the world of advertising- cater to our needs and desires and works as a kind of lure. The interference of fate and chance in the game increases the amount of suspense and entertainment. Both fate and chance induce a compulsive urge that is related to the compulsive repetitions in the “Transformation” Installations. “Casino” thus, becomes a symbol for the reckless defiance of fate. The “Prototype VIPAP” by Leo Copers is an invitation for the visitors to let themselves be publicly locked up in a metal prison cell. For the duration of five minutes and for the price of one euro, the visitor can get inside a sitting cage that is set up in the public sphere. The work remind the viewer of Middle Age pillories. The visitor who agrees to being locked up in this prison will publicly confess his crimes. Middle Age pillories had nothing to do with free choice, but here, the visitor will voluntarily choose to be displayed as the ‘perpetrator’. Copers subtly deconstructs the different layers of the situation: he combines a private space with a public space and simultaneously questions the relation between the victim and the perpetrator. He also analyses the mixed feelings the crowd experiences whilst witnessing this strange and carnivalesque spectacle. This scene is both sad and tragic, but also has a comical side to it. Both the visitors as well as the voluntary prisoners become active actors and participants in the artwork. “Democracy Game” by Meschac Gaba is part of the Game Room of the Museum of Contemporary African Art and consists of six tables with painted wooden sliding puzzles. The visitor is invited to play with the sliding puzzles, reconfiguring six national African flags. The flags, featured in a square shape instead of a rectangular one, are dismantled and reassembled as ordinary people take charge. For Gaba, this action uncovers the complexity of democracy and the difficulties of building autonomous and free nations. In “Das Zimmer (The Room)”, Pipilotti Rist has used video sculpture as a way to re-imagine domestic space. In the installation an oversized couch and armchair, made of red vinyl, are arranged in the centre of the room. The viewer is invited to enter the room with its through-the-looking-glass quality and to sit in the oversized furniture and use the enormous remote control to channel-hop through a compilation of the artist’s video works, shown on the television monitor. “OUT OF SIGHT” is a generic structure by Lawrence Weiner. Based upon the concept of a hopscotch and designed for public institutions, “OUT OF SIGHT” is flexible. The work is conceived to be exhibited in multiple languages. Weiner’s signature is his text-based work. His language takes on a new dimension with its presentation that takes the form of a game that invites viewers to engage with the work through motion. At PLAY Kortrijk the work is installed in a bilingual Flemish-English presentation. In “The Jungle Book Project”, an adaptation of the Walt Disney film, Pierre Bismuth attributes one of the 19 languages of the different versions of the film to each character, thus altering behaviours and attitudes commonly associated with a certain culture. In this way, he encourages us to reflect on the perception and understanding of languages. The story becomes a kind of anti-Babel parable in which the protagonists seem to understand each other, despite their use of different languages. The story transcends reality. The jungle, a violent and hostile place, becomes a paradise, where everybody loves and understands each other. On the one hand this fairy tale is comparable to the utopian ideal presented in the famous novel “Brave New World by Aldous Huxley”. On the other hand the video encourages us to think about what separates us from any foreigner. The visitor is invited to sit down on the colored cushions and is invited − as an individual − to make a choice. “La rivoluzione siamo noi” shows Marc Bijl’s fascination with popular culture. The work is a life-sized sculpture that represents the sex symbol Lara Croft. In Bijl’s version, the fictional figure is completely covered in black tar. She holds a lit cigarette in her mouth and an iconic pistol in either hand. She loses her sex appeal as the black viscous liquid dripping down her body turns her into a mutant. La rivoluzione siamo noi  is sprayed on the wall behind her. It is a reference to the famous slogan used by Joseph Beuys, who sought to activate social change through art. Bijl represents the heroine of the computer game Tomb Raider as a malevolent menace. Gavin Turk plays tribute to the conceptual artist André Cadere who was famous for appearing in museums and art galleries (sometimes as an invited guest but mostly spontaneously) transporting a kind of staff or stick, composed of colured elements (Barres Du Bois Rond). Often, the artist abandoned his artwork in the institutions or spaces he visited without warning the staff that worked there. This ‘punk’ attitude, comparable to the philosophy of the Situationist movement, fascinated Gavin Turk and inspired him to create his mobile and nomadic artworks.  What better choice for this, than an ordinary bike? A bicycle is a democratic, ecological and healthy means of transport. Aside from being a tribute to André Cadere, the “Les Bikes de Bois Rond”, also references Duchamp’s famous “bicycle wheel” and the leather saddle is a reference to the trendy Italian designer Castiglioni. Playfully combining the bicycle with art historical references produces a kind of newborn ready-made.

Participating Artists: Carlos Amorales, Polly Apfelbaum, Guillaume Bijl, Marc Bijl, Pierre Bismuth, Stefan Brüggemann, David Claerbout, Leo Copers, Martin Creed, Barbara Davi, Erin Davis, Wim Delvoye, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Friedl, Meschac Gaba, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Jeppe Hein, Carsten Höller, Fabrice Hyber, Christian Jankowski, Bernard Joisten, Lang/Baumann, MAP13, Anna Marín, Paul McCarthy, Dane Mitchell, Priscilla Monge, Navid Nuur, Erkan Özgen, Paola Pivi, Tere Recarens, Pipilotti Rist, Jennifer Rubell, Markus Sixay, Gavin Turk, Frederik Van Simaey, Heidi Voet, Lawrence Weiner and Erwin Wurm.

Info: Curators: ​Patrick Ronse & Hilde Teerlinck, Kortrijk, Belgium, Duration 23/6-11/11/18, Days & Hours: Outdoor: always open, Indoor: Tue-Sun 13:00-17:00, Info points: Texture, Noordstraat 28, Kortrijk, 1302, Begijnhof, Kortrijk, Muziekcentrum Track, Conservatoriumplein, Kortrijk (Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00), www.playkortrijk.be