Information about the project ÅÅÅ - a dive in the Universe
(info from A-BTffn's webpage http://abtffn8aaa.wordpress.com/):
This is the invitation: "The participants are asked to walk together with me, a sculpture balancing on one’s head as the horizon rises before the sun on a bridge, beach, river bank or by the lake somewhere."
About the sculptures: "The objects she makes to carry hold themselves together without glue or similar means. She creates, for example, more or less spherical shapes by knotting together sheets of newspaper or by plaiting plastic bags."
About the performance: ""Eugène Brâncuşi sat focus on the pedestals of his sculptures by carving them. He invited the public to his studio to point out the impact he meant the sculptures, their base and the space around them had on each other." The performance/stunt: I move around the exhibition space with my sculpture balancing on the head."
My experiences from participating in the performance:
I had not read about the project in advance, just had a faint idea about it. Something about balancing stuff on your head across bridges during sunset.
I made my own head-balancing-sculpture out of old engineer-magazines, to symbolize the engineering knowledge inside the head by putting engineering knowledge on top of it.
We started balancing different sculptures on our heads. A-BTffn had brought a lot of different sculptures for us to try. It soon became evident that my sculpture was far too easy to balance, that took away most of the experience. (Seems like the engineering knowledge became too light.) I had to balance one of the "real" sculptures to get into it.
First it was almost impossible to balance, but I got it right after some practice. Soon I was only focusing on the sculpture on my head and walking, everything else disappeared from my focus. I knew from before that it was slightly raining, and people were watching and photographing, but that became unimportant. It was a thrill experiencing being able to first balance, then to make some steps, and then turn.
After learning more about the project, some of the important issues were partly being a live pedestal for a sculpture, partly becoming aware of the surroundings. For my part I was excluding the surroundings, turning the awareness inwards, on my pedestal skills.
More about the project at: http://abtffn8aaa.wordpress.com/
