ICUL CTION C o n t e m p o r a r y
A r t
Laura Skocek and Christoph Gruber
R e v i e w
Special Issue
between elements as a hammock and a straitjacket that belongs to opposite places in the universal imagery, inviting the viewers to challenge their perceptual parameters. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how did you conceive the composition of Forced Leisure? Christoph Even in my times as a chef we
played with the customers anticipation, e.g. having a dish on the menu consisting of different parts of pork, but arranged to look like and named after a traditional Austrian sweet cake. Generally speaking I am quite a humorous and a bit cynical person and I really appreciate this moment when I am confronted with an unexpected association. It often makes me and others laugh and as an artist I can use this shift in perspective to draw the viewer in. After the expectations are destroyed the observer is open for new meanings. Thus I really like the idea of combining the hammock and the straightjacket and the contrasting ideas they represent: namely the command “Relax NOW!� while being forcefully constrained. My aspiration for this collaboration was to work on an interactive installation that made use of my knowledge of other professional fields, mainly Landscape Architecture, and to work outside of a museum or gallery, in public space. After deciding to work with textile sensors and a hammock, we ordered different types of hammocks and right
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Still from Citizens (Laura Skocek)
after unpacking the structure and tone of the fabric of one model instantly reminded us of a straightjacket. We loved the idea of being constrained in something you typically use for relaxation in your spare time and have the freedom to mount wherever you want. In merging these two antithetic