FITNESSLOUNGE – Work Growth Art

The installation, which essentially consists of three ›fitness machines‹, was specifically designed for the respective spaces – e.g. carpeted or sandy floors; a surrounding setting of plants or deconstructivist architecture made of slatted elements, etc.
The objects are constructed from deckchairs, wooden slats, and paddles / foot pumps / swim fins. They can be operated by the visitors. Trigger systems within the mechanisms of the objects generate sounds that users hear directly through headphones. Each object is assigned a topic: WORK - GROWTH - ART.

Behind these rough-looking, easy-to-use objects lies a sound system offering complex ways to play. On the one hand, users can select from three basic musical loops on each device via a button panel; on the other hand, moving the paddles (object WORK), pressing the foot pumps (object GROWTH), or pulling the fins’ ropes (object ART), up to 2 × 12 different voice snippets can be triggered (push-buttons and tilt sensors are built into the mechanisms). The snippets consist of various statements from political and sociological speeches related to the topics. The specific programming of the triggers allows the snippets – depending on the movement – to be interrupted and/or overlaid, i.e. to be ›sampled‹ in a wide variety of ways.

»I work with strategies of affirmation and ambivalence. For me, the fitness lounge is a moment of meditative exorcism of those promises which, as a 24-hour worker, a fetishist of added value and a collector of bonus points, as a bon vivant and self-designer, are increasingly enslaving me mentally in the purgatory of the ›Me Ltd‹. Hallelujah.«