Would you like to participate in an artistic experience? - A project by Ricardo Basbaum for documenta 12

Objects leave the works floor – ten white-blue steel objects are carried out of the workshop and loaded into a minibus and a colourful school bus.

: Trainees loading the objects *

: Roger M. Buergel und Ricardo Basbaum (right) *

The first art project for documenta 12 was launched in an apprentice workshop in Kassel: the social sculpture Would you like to participate in an artistic experience? by the Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum. A total of twenty steel objects will now be migrating through different households and meeting points on three continents, through towns and cities such as Kassel, Ljubljana, Mexico City or Dakar. They will be altered by their temporary owners, and will themselves change. They are "unreasonable, fitting in nowhere so they pose a challenge," as Roger M. Buergel commented. The documentation of this journey will be presented in June 2007, in an installation for documenta 12.

The rules of Would you like to participate in an artistic experience? are very simple: You simply have to agree to share experiences with the object shown above in your own living environment. You can use it in many different ways and do whatever you like with it; you can use it entirely as you please, to suit yourself. You should document your experience however you feel is appropriate: with text, photographs, video, sound, other objects, etc.

: Interested parties inspecting the objects *

The artistic proposal was the start. However, the gesture here is a wily one, one that entices the participants to become active. In Basbaum's words: "I want to reverse the relationship between the artist and the audience, to find out something about the people concerned. Now the audience is the sender and the artist is the recipient."
Everybody who plays host to the sculpture for a specified length of time is responsible for the way they treat it, which experiences are appreciated as such and how they are recorded. Accordingly, living with the art object unavoidably leaves traces, triggering off the unexpected or an adventure. This leads to a mutual relationship between me and you and so, too, to collective authorship.

The interactions with the "empty pie dish or a bathtub with a hole in it" allow a social space for an active approach and a sense of commitment to develop, i.e. a public stance. For Roger M. Buergel this project in public space currently represents the most cutting-edge sculptural position.

Would you like to participate in an artistic experience? was initiated in 1994 and has already circulated through several cities. In February 2006, Ricardo Basbaum presented his concept to the local experts of the documenta 12 advisory board. This led to an exchange and support of the project in the city of Kassel.
documenta 12 aims to provide impulses, to mobilise existing potential. Play begins.

Please visit www.nbp.pro.br for further information.

: Presentation at Kulturzentrum Schlachthof *