PechaKucha x Chol Theatre at The Media Centre, Huddersfield, 29/11/12
Slides 11-15
Detritus: Kurt Schwitters (1919)
Dada poet Tristan Tzara recalled Kurt Schwitters’ use of the detritus everyday life in his early collages: “I remember seeing Schwitters pick up in the streets scraps of old iron, broken watch works, bizarre and absurd materials which even junk men would have discarded, to use them in the fabrication of works of art.”
Refuse: Michel de Broin – Dead Star (2008)
Dead Star is made from residual batteries at the end of their duty. Left to itself, the sculpture will slowly cool down since there is no longer electronic activity taking place in it.
Junk: Noble & Webster – Wild Mood Swings (2009-10)
Tim Noble and Sue Webster created their self-image as “art junkies” in the 90s in London during the rise of the YBAs. Their sculptural assemblages are crafted from junk which is light projected onto to create shadows of their own likeness.
Ruins: Jean Tinguely – Homage to New York (1960)
Jean Tinguely unveiled his self-destructing sculpture in the gardens of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960. The enormous white machine made up of discarded items began smoking, whirring, crashing, flaming and committing mechanical suicide. This is what is left of the sculpture housed in the Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland.
Scrap: César – Three Compressions (1968)
The French artist César made sculptures from car bodies compressed into dense packages. In 1968 he visited a scrap metal merchant in London and requested standard compressions of wheel hubs be prepared for his inspection, from which he selected three for this specific configuration.
