 | Nils Norman (GB)
Public Workplace Playground
Sculpture for Graz
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Public Workplace Playground Sculpture for Graz, 2009
Installation
OSB panels, timber structure, oil drum, stove pipe, plants
Use at your own risk. steirischer herbst assumes no liability!
Volksgarten
Nils Norman is interested in alternative economies, ecology, mobility, political participation, and historical and possible future social utopias. Based on this interest he has developed several projects that are concerned with an alternative use of public spaces and thus allow us to imagine a public sphere that is not subordinate to the interests of commercial exploitation and privatisation. Recently, he has been critically examining the ‘creative industries’ and the long-term consequences of new forms of self-employed entrepreneurship and the establishing of a ‘creative class’ in urban centres.
For the Volksgarten in Graz, Norman has developed an installation of recyclable material that is, or may be, a workplace, playground facility, meeting place and shelter, that is covered with plants, and thus targets various age groups and interests. The facility provides even a DIY-eco-‘rocket oven’ that uses very little fuel and creates great heat to cook on. Norman intentionally places this installation on an existing, empty concrete platform, thus appropriating a piece of the public sphere. The installation appears to be a kind of prototype for an innovative workplace, in which the public space and space of (creative) work coincide. Does this make the park as the utopia of a communal and, above all, leisure-time territory for all social groups a thing of the past? With the aid of his installation Norman sets out to spread a speculative temporary utopia – outcome unknown.
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
Project sponsor Think!
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25/09 - 18/10
Utopia and Monument I
Fri 25/09, 6 pm
Vernissage at the exhibition pavilion, Platz der Freiwilligen Schützen / Bad zur Sonne
public space
Nils Norman
Born in Kent (GB) in 1966; lives in London (GB).
25/09 - 18/10
Utopia and Monument I
Fri 25/09, 6 pm
Vernissage at the exhibition pavilion, Platz der Freiwilligen Schützen / Bad zur Sonne
public space
Nils Norman
Born in Kent (GB) in 1966; lives in London (GB).
