The Carcassonne re:table will be on show as an object/sound installation on May 22nd, 23rd and 24th (as part of the 11th Kunsttour ('Zonder Titel') in Room 13 of the Timmerfabriek in Maastricht, the Netherlands (Boschstraat 5 - after you enter, it's the first door to your left), daily from 11-18h.

Instant coffee and (b)[re](a)d wine
(the Spoerri re:Table in Extrapool, Nijmegen)

may 18, 2010.

Here is a picture of our Carcassonne table, mere hours before its Dutch premiere, on Friday May 14th, 2010, during a special A Spoerri Table! evening at the Nijmegen Extrapool center.

And this is how the same Spoerri re:tabletop looked the morning after. (Click to see it bigger.)

It is, of course, but one of the unforeseeable many results that the tabletop's initial state may lead to, when its time - that was frozen from Tuesday 17 October 1961, 15h47, onwards - is made to tick again.

In the process that lead up to this particular result, Nijmegen based musician Roy Santiago did seem to take a truly satanic pleasure while he slowly emptied the pots of instant coffee (#6, #53) onto the table (it sounded like rain), mixed the soluble coffee grains with the coffee brew that was left over in the small bowl (#30) (it sounded like grinding), pushed in the rests of bread (#1, #24) (they went 'plopp') and then sprinkled it all (which sounded like 'pshhh') with the red wine gone bad from the liter bottle of not-really Vin des Rochers #3, thus covering the central part of the re:table with something that looked very brown and was very sticky.

In Extrapool, after A Table!'s opening piece of sonic theatre, it were Roy and Eva van Deuren Titania Soledad (who had come over from Antwerp, Belgium) that took our places, and played the Spoerri table.

It was the first time that I actually could sit back to just listen and watch while the table evolved, without myself being (at least partly) in control of its evolution. Roy and Eva made me laugh a lot, but I do have to admit that Roy's 'bitches brew' had that laugh turn a wee bit into that of the infamous Dutch farmer with a toothache ... :-) ... But of course, it was one of the things to do. "Eigen schuld, dikke bult," n'est-ce pas ? Maurice and I cleaned it all up again the next morning. But the tabletop starts bearing the indelible marks of a second life, marks of all that on it is 'being the case'. And that, of course, is exactly the way it is meant to be.

I particularly liked and admired the duo's final gesture, the one that ended Eva and Roy's performance: Eva covered up the table with a small tablecloth that in the middle had a hole, which perfectly matched the now empty wine bottle's neck that at the end of their set found itself at the very center of the table.

The Nijmegen Spoerri evening itself ended at another table, brought there from Ghent in Belgium by Hans Oiseau, who took us on a concentrated trip along a landscape decorated with a wealth of sounds, sometimes subtle and floating, sometimes edgy and rhythmically pounding.

[ Thanks to Extrapool for their enthusiastic support of the idea of 'A Spoerri Table!' and the publication of "Re: Table. Rezzing Daniel Spoerri's 1961 Carcassonne Table", the - essential! - printed erudite companion to the project, with a fine lay-out by Alfred Boland, many illustrations, a new realist play (recounting how Maurice JJ and Har$ went to the Rue Mouffetard in search of Hotel de Carcassonne's room number 13), 2 essays and many footnotes on Spoerri's picture-traps and the re-construction of the Carcassonne table. The - limited numbered edition - booklet is currently available from the Extrapool shop in Nijmegen (the Netherlands), at Boekie Woekie's, Berenstraat 16 in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), at the Bimbo Tower Records shop in Paris (France) and at "A Spoerri Table!" events. You can also order it online. ]

tags: A Table!, Nijmegen, Spoerri

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Paris Visite

may 15, 2010.

This is what Blenno, of Wurst-Brücke fame, sent me a couple of days ago. "Pour ton truc internet," he wrote in the accompanying email. Yet another spot worth visiting in Paris for all of you who saw the Louvre, Eiffel tower and the Moulin Rouge once too often :-)

tags: Paris

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