Stories from the perspective of piles

 

Stories from the perspective of piles is an art installation by För Künkel and Renata Gaspar. The work comprises a collection of photographs taken during their journey throughout Occupied Palestine in March 2016, semi-fictional text, and pictures of different model piles.    

Stories from the perspective of piles is an artistic exploration of piles and their different meanings. A pile refers to a heap of things placed on top of each other; an object made of several individual and smaller units. Yet, a pile also testifies to how different places are interconnected; specifically, the sites of extraction of natural resources with the sites of construction. Throughout the process of their formation, piles accumulate numerous trajectories, both physical and narrative. For example, depending on their location and context, piles indicate the place of a future infrastructure, or of a recently destroyed building, or like in most cases across Occupied Palestine, where permanent acts of rebuilding take place, piles suggest defiance and a mode of resistance.

 
piles


About the artists:

För Künkel is a performance artist as well as a stage-and costume designer creating installations, theatrical works, and videos dealing with the politics of spatial practices. She grew up in Germany, Zimbabwe and South Africa and now lives in Berlin. She studied ‘Scenography’ (Hochschule Hannover, BA), and ‘Regional Studies and Philosophy’ with a focus on Postcolonial Studies and a geographical focus on Africa (Humbold University Berlin, BA). She is currently doing her MA in ‘Performance Studies in Arts and Media’ with a focus on Theatre (University of Hildesheim).

http://www.foerkuenkel.de

 

Renata Gaspar (Portugal) is a performance artist working with text, video and sound across issues of mobility and practices of cultural resistance. With a background in Dance (ESD, Lisbon, and London Contemporary Dance School) she has a MA in Performance Making (Goldsmiths, London), and is a PhD candidate (Roehampton University, London, supported by FCT, Portugal), and a research collaborator of CIAC – a center for research in arts and communication, Portugal. Her current practice-based research project explores the role of spatial relations and their politics in contemporary culture.

http://www.renatagaspar.com