ARCHEOLOGICAL STUDIES

„Archeological Studies (part I)“ is a performance that we realized at the summer festival „Lichterfest“ of the K21 - Museum of Contemporary Art in Düsseldorf. The performance played with the representative position of the institution of the museum and scientific systems.

The performance group, disguised as an archaeological research delegation, camped in a tent in front of the museum. A professional diver picked up objects underwater from Kaiserteich, the lake facing the museum. The objects found in the semi-natural environment of the lake - bottles, rubbish, plastic, and a teddy bear - were brought by a boat crew to the researchers’ tent, where they were examined, classified, categorized and archived for an exhibition. While interacting with the audience, all the performers played the role of scientists - with specializations such as astro-mineralogy, futurism, utopianism, and chaos prevention.

The audience were baffled - unsure how to classify the research delegation within the context of the museum.

The first part of „Archeological studies“ functioned as the foundation for an installation.

With „Archeological Studies (part II) - archive“ we moved the setting of the piece from a public to an interior space, from a simulated connection to an institution to within an actual institutional space of a museum - an exhibition at Kunsthalle Osnabrück during EMAF.

The installation consisted of a video, displayed on a wall of flat screens, and two vitrines containing the found objects, as well as scientific notes from the research. The installation was presented at the European Media Art Festival at Kunsthalle Osnabrück, in the context of an exhibition on irony as a subversive artistic method.