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Olly / defunktion.net
Make it Quick
Defunktion had some down-time over the weekend that, unfortunately, stretched on into the week. You missed us. We missed you. So it was a shame indeed, but these quiet moments provided enough time to reflect on the concept of the ephemeral within art.
You may already be worrying that this threatens to get boring. When there are things like the Szpilman Awards, exploring art in the context of the temporal is anything but. The awards committee takes a playful approach to dealing with high-concept art-works; instigated by people smart enough to understand what they re exploring and clever enough to allay any potential pretentious notions. The TV game show-esque copy is particularly amusing: Ready for the next Szpilman Award Jubilee! More money, more extras, more suspense!
The central idea behind the award is to promote ephemeral situations explored in art. So to qualify for entry, a piece has to simply exist for a short period if time. It s so easy to understand, yet has the potential to do such clever things: the awards toy with paradigms like a clever kitten pawing with a shocked mouse - the winning pieces are always barely noticeable, fleeting and quite intricate.
2006 resulted in a selection of interesting international entries, all of which were competing for the prize: an indeterminate amount of Zloty, 10 days accommodation in Poland and a tasteful cup. Amongst other entries, of note was Stefanie Trojan s performative piece whereby she wandered around the Louise Bourgeois exhibition, at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, surreptitiously approaching unwitting individuals and caressing their faces. And Martin Flemming, the winner, who wedged a book on top of a street-lamp situated underneath a bridge, the book contains a photograph of the book in that same position, the conundrum being, & it is impossible to see the photo but possible to see what is on it, if you are standing under the bridge. If the book is taken out by anybody, the work is eliminated.
The rationale set out by the Szpilman Awards results in these sweet and sometimes silly art-works. The interesting thing being that some of these creations can be quite poignant - take Pol Matthé s 2006 submission for example: he likes finding out what s on the other side of walls, so he builds his own ad-hoc walls out of wooden boxes. Which is either very deep or very indulgent, such is the joy of the Szpilman awards, long may it continue.
May 2007
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