Friday, Nov 19, 2021, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Introduction: Julia Schleis, Curator Fridericianum
Screening: Rirkrit Tiravanija: Karl’s Perfect Day, (2017)
Subsequently: talk with Karl Holmqvist (in English)
In May 2020, Karl Holmqvist realized the site-specific work Existential Staircase / Existenzielles Treppenhaus at the Fridericianum, where so-called w-words (in English and in German) refer to life’s elemental questions. Now he returns to Kassel on the occasion of DokfestForum. In the film Karl’s Perfect Day (2017) by internationally acclaimed artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, a camera accompanies Holmqvist through his “perfect” day: he is seen jogging in a park, working in his studio, and falling asleep. Here, art making and the banalities of everyday life are juxtaposed and presented on an equal footing.
The site-specific interventions and performances by Holmqvist (b. 1964 in Västerås, lives and works in Berlin) have been the subject of numerous international museum presentations and biennials since the early 2000s. In 2021, an artist’s book of his concrete and spoken word poetry was published by the Fridericianum, Kassel, and gta exhibitions, ETH Zurich.