This choreographed performance with Segways centres on bodies and technology. It is inspired by the ever-increasing integration of the human body with machines – whether it is the tendency to see the human body like a machine even when it is not attached to a mechanical apparatus, or our desire to use computational metaphors to describe the cognitive functions of the human brain.
David Chipperfield’s Sticks and Stones creates a tension between the original architectural components of the Neue Nationalgalerie and its new ones – the tree trunks installed as part of the exhibition. Each tree in the installation represents an individual body that has grown a certain way and has its own specific history. These new “bodies” lie in contrast to the existing architectural components that have been processed to fit precise measurements and have been long alienated from their raw material origins. Yet these trees have been strictly arranged into a precise grid – an algorithmic forest. In their attempts to integrate with the existing geometric system, they are bodies pretending to be architecture.
To highlight this tension, the work adds more bodies integrated with machines, mobile columns in their own right, organised in rows and according to a preselected algorithm.
Kindly supported by yoove Mobility GmbH
