Søren Engsted

What makes a non-place perceptible? And how do you get to perceive it, normally without you noticing?
Søren Engsted (Vienna, Copenhagen) and Christoph Meier (Vienna) were commissioned to do a work for the staircase of the Kunsthaus, their first joint work. They set about the question sotheir different approaches to sculpture would come into play. They designed a project that uses a performative act to appropriate and define a place,following the logic of Marc Augé. In the social performance Bananasplit, visitors’ eyes are caught by a pile of banana skins as they enter the building.But only after coming out of the exhibitions, on leaving the building by the otherwise nondescript staircase, is the puzzle solved, and visitors aregradually drawn into a performative piece. Up in the Needle, they are already able to pick up a poster with theoretical musings about the work ofChristoph Meier, and another poster of a crumpled print by Søren Engsted. Then in the stairwell they are given a banana. Visitors then becomeparticipants in an amusing “passage piece” depending on what they do and decide about the “gift” – whether to accept it or not, eat it or not, anddump the skin on the table provided or not. As part of a series of projects that will make more use of the Kunsthaus Graz staircase, the openingproject has revealed with humour and a sharp eye basically what this space has to offer, and worked it up into a performative sculpture thatinvestigates formal aspects of architecture, and aspects of movement and perception.
Kunsthaus Graz