As part of the show “The Global Contemporary | Art Worlds After 1989” at ZKM, problems were collected from the citizens of Karlsruhe, Germany and sent to think tanks in Ghana, Mexico, Serbia, Cambodia and the Gaza Strip for resolution.
The solutions involved hiring Africans from a charismatic church to attend German social functions, pitting neighboring yet disconnected communities against each other in street chess, organizing a real-life telenovela that included a cheating husband, a bitch slap, and a jello fight, and arranging Parkour lessons to show the citizens of Karlsruhe that no city lacks topography.
The installation was built in a former equestrian training center in the suburbs of Karlsruhe, piled onto a trailer built to transport small airplanes, and towed by a bright orange vintage Ford Transit to the ZKM Contemporary Art Center.
The installation involved a landscape-like series of bevels crafted from synthetic aged wood, populated with a vintage cassette player full of funny, dirty stories told by elderly Germans, manikin-tops in t-shirts, and a machine for collecting problems that asks “WAS IST DEIN PROBLEM?”
