CHANDELIER

of COHEN Steven

SOUTH AFRICA, 2002, 00:16:25

Production : COHEN Steven
Genre : Filmed action, Portrait
Keyword : Africa, Allegory, Performance, Society

Summary :
Artists have always painted the social concerns of their time, and by my moving in a chandelier-tutu through a squatter camp being demolished ... and filming it ... that's what I'm doing too, a digital painting of a social reality, half beautifully imagined, half horribly real - where Hollywood glamour meets concentration camp horror. I am trying to shed light on what is seldom seen, by creating amid destruction. "What I do is always a question - going to a squatter camp in a chandelier is asking the question "what will happen when I wear an illuminated chandelier-tutu into lightless squatter territory?" with no intention of resolving anything - it's not like "I'm going to wear a chandelier and go to a squatter camp and fix things" - I am not a well-intentioned political art plumber. My art is about trying to articulate the results of an experiment while it happens.(…°" (Dr Gerald Matt in conversation with Steven Cohen, Kunsthalle Vienna project space catalogue, Dancing Inside Out, Feb 2006) Concept & public intervention: Steven Cohen

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