Com&Com: BLOCH. Internationale Bloch Gesellschaft (IBG) (2012)
Introduction video for the art project BLOCH by Swiss artist Duo Com&Com
About BLOCH
BLOCH is an inter- and multidisciplinary project linking contemporary art with folk culture. The project's participatory and performative live events and productions will alter our conventional ways of understanding customs, traditions, festivals, and processions.
The direct products and outcome of the project will include a traveling tree trunk (the Bloch), physical impressions of the tree in the places it visits, and related cultural and social events (festivals, processions) as well as a series of short films.
Specifically, the project centers an old Carnival custom from the Appenzell region. Every other year, the last fir tree felled that winter is decorated and pulled by twenty men -- on a wagon outfitted with driver, two musicians, and a blacksmith with a smoking oven -- from the village of Urnäsch to neighboring Herisau and back. At the end of the day-long procession, the trunk is auctioned off on the Urnäsch town square to the highest bidder and a masquerade ball follows in the evening.
In the past, the Bloch has been purchased at the auction by one of the locals to be put to practical use (as material for furniture or shingles, for example.) But in 2011, the buyers were the Swiss artist duo Com&Com. Now the artists plan to give the trunk a new role: instead of simply traveling the relatively short distance between the two villages before ending up as building material, the Bloch will travel the world, leaving traces -- physical and symbolic, artistic and social -- wherever it goes. In a series of stages, the Bloch will visit various countries, entering into a dialog with cultures and people foreign to it. At the end of this journey, the trunk will return back to its starting point in Urnäsch, Switzerland.
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About COM&COM
Com&Com was founded in 1997 by Marcus Gossolt and Johannes M. Hedinger.
They live in Zurich and St.Gallen and work in situ.
Com&Com achieved international recognition in 2001 with their film project with HR Giger, C-Files: Tell Saga, which was invited by Harald Szeemann to be shown at the Venice Biennal. Thier pop song Side by Side with Dieter Meier (Yello) reached the Swiss Top Ten in 2002, and their controversial project featuring the monument Mocmoc (2003-07) culminated in a national referendum. In addition to such participatory works in the public and social arena, Com&Com has more recently (re)discovered performance; classical media such as drawing, painting, and sculpture; and subjects such as nature, folklore and tradition.In addition to solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zürich (2000) and the Kunstwerken Berlin (2003), Com& Com has participated in group shows at the ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunstmuseum Bern, Migros Museum Zürich, as well as six biennals. Their first retrospective was held in 2010 at CentrePasquArt in Biel/Switzerland.
So far, Com&Com has taken part in more than 120 exhibitions in 18 countries, made 22 short films, issued eight CDs and seven books, and staged a musical. These multifaced artists also organize performances, curate exhibits, work regularly as docents, give lectures, fulfill creative commissions, and conduct academic art research.
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