Scirocco Plot was performing All Along the Watchtower during two days of the Art in Unusual Places Festival in Vilnius - European Capital of Culture 2009. They appeared with a mobile sculpture packed on a handcart and made a tour through Vilnius to find places where they put up the tower.
All Along the Watchtower,
the performance of Scirocco Plot for the event Art in Unusual Places in the city centre of Vilnius consisted of a mobile tower as a viewing point and non-permanent residence to interact with the cityscape and people. In a constant performance during the two days of the festival the two group members assembled the artwork on-site, remained there for a while and then dismantled it again to take it to a new site.
The starting point of the performance was the main railway station of Vilnius and it was carried on in a the fashion of a flaneur in the city, passing the famous sites of Vilnius like the Dawn Gate and the Gediminas Tower, as well as making its own voyage of discovery through the city area and around the current art projects of the festival.
The performance tells about the constructing, using and deconstructing of an ephemeral sculpture. The tower adds an abstract architectural piece to the cityscape of Vilnius. Its three-dimensional, skeletal structure sets up a kaleidoscopic image of a sculptural nature in the urban surroundings. Scirocco Plot refers back to construction methods of architecture models of the nineteen-sixties by Buckminster Fuller, Emmerich and Snelson, who developed the utopian idea of a light, but stable architecture. Scirocco Plot attempts to awaken interest in the idea of inventing travelling role models for a globally transient century.
The tower is also, on a practical level, a device for gaining a better view, an artwork to be gazed at, and a point for establishing contacts. Questions of balance are demonstrated in the transition states from the constructed to the repacked tower and vica versa. The foldable skeleton tower is transported on a handcart from one site in Vilnius to the next. Once put up, the entire construction is self-supporting due to the tension between the lashing straps and aluminium tubes.
Materials and dimensions
Tower: aluminium tubes, lashing straps, iron fittings, varnish, 3.8m high, 2.50m ø
Handcart: aluminium, canvas cover, wheels, fittings, 2.52m × 0.30m× 0.45m
Special thanks to Laura Garbstiene, Indrute Nausedaite, Dietrich Klakow, Andy Homeyer, Baumann Befestigungstechnik, Martin Wellmer @ sculpture workshop bbk Berlin, Justina Polikaityté @ Vilnius - European Capital of Culture 2009 and Irja Berg @ German Embassy Vilnius
