Occupation Game – to&to&to traces the space occupied by (all) the exhibitions that ever took place in kunst Meran Merano arte gallery space. This, sort of a detective’s work, is based on what can still be found in an archive with hundreds of exhibition photos and hours of video documentation. To create this on-site intervention, tapes in different colours and thicknesses have been used.

 

[inscribed and rewritten]

Occupation Game has been realised as a part of the group exhibition FROM_&_TO in the north Italian town Merano. The starting idea for this intervention was that an art space like kunst Meran Merano arte is deliberately set up as an incubator for yet-to-be-erased imaginations. The ideas of artists and curators – time after time, exhibition after exhibition – are inscribed into its space, and then re-written. What stays are memories and a few documents (catalogue, video recording, tv documentary, some photos). What would happen if we would overlap and at once see all the traces that show how this space was used?

 

[accumulated projections]

The documentation from different mentioned sources has been used to detect positions of artworks in the gallery spaces during its six-year existence, and 24 exhibitions. Their outlines are ‘drawn’ with tape on the floor, each year in a different colour and each exhibition within one year with another line thickness (2002 – white,… 2007 – red, line thicknesses 9 mm to 75 mm). These accumulated ‘shadows’, or horizontally layered projections, map the total ‘history’ of artistic occupation of this space.

[intervention in space]

The tape intervention was made within six days; it occupied the gallery hall and the first floor (about 150 m2) and was installed for three months. One of the rooms contained a legend with tape/year/title for each exhibition.


  • [team ] Ana Džokić and Marc Neelen
  • [curators ] Valerio Dehò and Denis Isaia
  • [background ] kunst Meran Merano arte asked six key artists from the region of Trentino Alto Adige (Italy) to each invite an internationally renowned artist whom they do not know personally to jointly realize a work of art for the exhibition FROM_&_TO at Merano arte with them. STEALTH joined the project on an invitation from the Italian artist Stefano Cagol. The other artist teams included: Michael Fliri – Paul Kos, Philipp Messner – Matthew Smith, Brigitte Niedermaier – Marit Victoria Wulff Andreassen, Laurina Paperina – Anton Kannemeyer, and Stefano Bernardi. Ivo Corrà documented the development of the project; his photographs constituted a-diary-like catalogue, designed by Studio Granit.
  • [timeline ] September 2007 – January 2008
  • [publicity ]  FROM_&_TO – from Merano to the world and back, catalogue published by Damiani, Bolzano. On the exhibition, see also www.artelabonline.com/ (IT only).