equilibrium analysis
About the mobile installation "equilibrium analysis (Gleichgewichtsanalyse)" from Ralf Kopp
The history of art of the last fifty years shows: bank notes are not only used to pay for bread and butter. You can as well paint over or cast them in acrylic, puzzle into collage or compress them to Ludwig-Erhard-cigars. You might maltreat them in the most rabid case with sulfuric acid or shredder them, to build a house from the bits and pieces Ralf Kopp worked more cautiously, not because he would shy away from the taboo of money destruction. His Mobile consisting of twenty 10-Euro notes and a 200-Euro note works only because of intact material.
At first glance one sees the fragile elegance that one would expect from a mobile as - according to Wikipedia - "free coherent, balanced, lightweight structure that is moved by a faint breeze." Its elements revolve around each other on their carbon bars, each of the ten Euro notes around themselves. You might be reminded of fish swimming in a pond. At the same time it is not the poetry of abstract forms and pure movement, in contrast to the classical mobiles of Alexander Calder.
Prior you assign notes - this lubricant of trade - an artistic function, they have a well-defined and differentiated function in terms of value in the world "out there". This function permanently rotates in Kopp’s mobile at eye level of the audience. And in the minds automatically starts brooding about the relationship between "large" and "small" notes, which is titled as "equilibrium analysis" in the expansive installation of many cubic meters. Blowing or tapping on the notes makes them move similar in their behavior to the figure of a three-dimensional vector analysis - according to weight, spatial position, direction of movement, surface, air resistance.
After the proviso that the Put-in-motion of a 10-Euro note will not affect the moving of the 200-Euro note, vice versa tapping the 200-Euro note will strongly affect the whole swarm of the 10-Euro notes. This reflects nothing more than a balance of power that is transferred immediately from the monetary-quantitative to a social-qualitative context. In zoological terms the predator big yellow fish circling at a safe distance his pink prey.
Yes, who? The interpretation of Kopps mobile is up to the beholder. On the other hand, he has created the work not by accident in times of chronic global financial crisis and emerging resistance coming from below, so to speak, from the little fishes. The demonstrators in the financial district would certainly see themselves confirmed by the possibility that Kopp has created, to overturn the dominance of the 200-Euro note and establish a value balance in the mobile. This can be reached by moving the entire 10-Euro notes in a common direction. Oh – is that the reason why they speak always about Occupy movement in the news?
Comments 0
Say something