SANDWICH! NO BOX

We decided to work with the Sandwich Box, because we found the materials common and we wanted to do usual things with it. When the performative practice brought the deconstruction of the format, it was also a proposal about the process itself, grabbing common materials and listing a bunch of unusual possibilities to deal with it, putting in poetic evidence a discourse about quotidian life.

In our case, it had nothing to do with this way of re-using poor materials - as a social critique of post-modern life - that should become more special, but to use them in a casual way, taking it, nevertheless, emotionally and gently in a nonsense perspective.

From a list of one hundred possible things to do with the Sandwich Box, we picked four:

//////////////.To get used to the Sandwich Box;

//////////////.To loose the Sandwich Box, and then what?;

//////////////.To play any kind of sport on the Sandwich Box;

//////////////.To hole up in the Sandwich Box, our common shelter.

GET USED TO IT!

It was summer, it was nice. we went to the park to roll in the grass, we tried to do barbecues like the other people in Berlin do. We wanted to be integrated in the city, to be loved by someone. In the outside activities we found people like us, with the same tastes for music and carrying the same kind of materials everywhere. Once again we found our way of living so common, and even “Sandwich Boxes” were all over, cohabiting and loosing their own sense of originality in an environment in which they seemed to be native. One could not see which was “real” or “fake”, but that doesn’t matter, it’s only a question of property.

Anyway - we admit now- we sent back to the travellers box a fake green sheet.

Swapping materials is also funny.

LOOSING IT!

Loosing the sandwich box was a pretext to work with the notion of disillusion and responsibility within a group and collective to achieve something further, special and funny.

Frustration is also a way to see the artistic world/activity, even if you are inside.

The illusion of disappointment makes us work with the possibility of failure, misunderstanding, remorse and that sensation that you feel when you don’t have the ability to forgive - bitterness.

This allowed us to cohabit with the fantasy that we could have done the most incredible things with the Sandwich Box but we got stuck in the way because we lost it, or because we ceased to believe in it and we left it behind.

(sorry so much for all the written mistakes in these posts, i'll try to be more professional next time!)

PLAY ON IT!

In the multiplicity we found a place for ourselves where we could sleep and do boring and pleasurable things. Thinking in size as a relative measure led us to wander on ways to dissimulate the content of the Sandwich Box. The sheet was green, the weather was bad, our living room was big enough and we had recently purchased badminton racquet’s. We thought to experience with the Sandwich Box another kind of leisure, we played for a while, for some days, the living room was a courtyard.

The rest of us stood in silence.

Summer in Berlin on Vimeo.

HOLE UP!

The materials that come with the Sandwich Box are commonly associated with a portable shelter.

We were naturally attracted by this property, not just because it could be used as a potential protector, but also as a place where we could hide ourselves.

One of us started the game of searching for this temporary space to be hidden. Instinctively a rule appeared: to be under of it without setting a fixed structure. The solution was to launch the cover repeatedly, to stop the material from falling, and remain below the accidental and mutable shapes made by the air blowing the material. Another of us was photographing the moment, selecting fragments of the fight between the body and the flexible space.

"Program for the project The Sandwich Box

The Sandwich Box project is an artistic discourse between artists, whereby both analysis and production play a part. Its foundation rests on the notion of collaboration in that individual artists’ viewpoints, thoughts and interactions with the objects themselves combine with the relationships that develop because of it, and manifest themselves in various forms. Its creation and interpretation is therefore driven by artists both interacting with the objects but also building a series of networked relationships, both nationally and globally. From this, we hope that many relationships and conversations are explored and developed as the project unfolds. As well, because of the mobile, global nature of the project, it is constantly evolving and therefore in some ways, quite unfixed and malleable.
In addition to developing these conversations and relationships, one of the primary ideas behind the project is to explore the notion of being a facilitator in relation to the establishment of new strategies, constructs, structures and platforms in which to create art.
To that end, the Sandwich Box project wishes to explore the notion of contemporary art in relation to its construction, communication and eventual presentation to a wider audience. It is aimed at demonstrating and communicating art in a wide cultural and creative context, using a range of expressions and artforms, such as visual art, music, writing, performance, etc,. and in those various contexts, exploring a myriad of cultural ideas and discourses such as politics, cultural constructs, sustainability, the notion of playfulness and fantasy in relation to art, and so on. It therefore becomes a vital forum for discussing and sharing ideas.
There is also a strong desire for change and development within this context. The Sandwich Box project aims to be a player and facilitator in relation to the establishment of new strategies, constructs and structures in order to create new platforms for practitioners to develop work and share ideas via different knowledge areas. It in a sense becomes an ‘analysis apparatus’ – the objects become a vehicle, or trajectory, from which these ideas can be explored and communicated.
One of the ways in which these ideas will be explored is in the documentation each group of artists produces in relation to their work with the project. It is our hope that the documentation then serves to illuminate such things as:
Social constructions and ideological factors in terms of their relationship to contemporary art, social processes, establishment of new forms of cooperation and communication, exploring alternative lifestyles and cultural communities, creating a collective feeling, networking and developing relationships, knowledge sharing via transparent structures, and of course, the necessity for fiction and an element of playfulness...

Ultimately, the Sandwich Box project aims to produce and work in an open, multi-voice, free, non-commercial and non-hierarchical context, and attaches importance to the involvement of a broad range of other discourses and disciplines. Setting a precedent and clarifying these values in a transparent way, where the main idea is creating a creative community and sharing knowledge, information and contacts across borders will create an artistic exchange and collaboration that crosses not only cultures and geographical borders but also different artistic practices. This breeding ground will by its very nature facilitate the sharing of artistic ideas for both the artists and the audience."