In times of Emergency

Installation, Exhibition at the Priesterseminar der Minoriten im Steirischen Herbst 2001
Curators: Johannes Rauchenberger, Alois Kölbl

Over the period of one month I covered the floors of my studios in the Isola Farnese – Rome and the one in Shibuya -Tokyo with white paper. Life should create two huge drawings. The dimensions of the rooms were 50m2 versus 15m2. After the 30 day period one could read the different life styles/mentalities each culture has to offer: Rome was covered with dirt as people would leave their shoes on, there were stains of wine, a dog had vomited on the paper floor – traces of life were to be detected all over. In Tokyo in comparison after one month of use the paper floor was immaculately white – with a tiny little stain of green tea in one corner. The traces of life left behind on the Roman studio floor would let you see where the desk had been placed, where the bed, the chairs etc. Tokyo remained undefined, white, abstract, no chairs, no table, not even a bed as one sleeps on tatamis and everyone would take their shoes off outside and enter the studio wearing immaculate clean socks.

In the exhibition there was third room in which the movie Masaccio was projected and a trompe l’oeil drawing depicted an entrance door that was drawn with graphite.