#237 Turned Table - Paper Cups

This work was done during the "Winter Solstice 2019: WE DANCE ALONE" art event at Kroloftet, Frysja, in Oslo, organised by Hanan Benammar. The public was invited to make imprints with paper cups on the condition that they committed to making a voluntary donation to something or someone. They also had to write down the recipients on the side of the frame. This it was they wrote, in no particular order:

A school in Nepal | Snorre | Ana | Tiggaren jag går förbi hver bidige dag uten å hvite navnet til (the beggar a pass every day without knowing the name of) | Tiggeren jag ser hver dag, let's call him Bobby (the beggar I see every day, let's call him Bobby) | Leger uten grenser (Doctors Without Borders) | Taylor | Buy a gift and drop it anonymously to an angry person | The first person who ask me for money | UNHCR | Dråpen I Havet | Jewish Voice For Peace | Money to the artist | MSF | Mamma (Mommy) | A beggar on the bridge Bakke Bru | Fyr som ville ha øl (A guy who wanted beer) | Till ett skolprojekt i Nepal insamlat av Kosh-An (to a school project in Nepal collected by Kosh-An | MSF | Foreningen Tryggere Ruspolitikk | Dråpen i Havet | Red Cross | Next beggar

The table was available for the whole night. This is the result.

Paper Cups a series of paintings with imprints from regular paper cups. The kind you get from fast food places, and the kind that often is used by people begging in the streets. The series is about the disparity of economic resources.

Begging, an expression of the most precarious vulnerability is man’s most profound condition. We need others to exist. It is a gesture that expresses the truth about our position. Entirely subject to a potentially indifferent world. Begging tells something about money. We have an economic relationship with reality. We are endlessly exposed to the contingency of life, and to those who embrace the raw power of injustice. Begging, and giving without compensation and conditions, is a subversive act. A protest and an act of resistance, showing that another world is possible.

TABLES is a triparted art project. First, it is a participatory art event where I invite the public to do a mark or imprint of their choice in the wet filler inside a frame with legs attached, placed on the floor like a table. The table functions as a kind of recording device documenting any movement transcending its surface. Second, I exhibit the table and its surface-document of the event as it is. Finally, the legs are detached, I finish the work, tilt it, and turn it into a painting with the title Turned Table.

Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give a statement of the event taking place while the filler was still wet.

Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.