Monat des Makaken (2021)

Monat des Makaken (month of the macaque) was a one month long intervention in a public park (Rapoldipark) in Innsbruck, developed as part of the Art in public space program by KÖR-Tirol.

 

For the whole month of October the bathhouse including a wood oven was open for people to take a hot bath and watch a video work projected on the housing of the bathtub. The 44460 minute long video showed different actors of the park (birds, bugs, trees, plants, rodents…) which got captured by wildlife cameras installed in the surrounding area of the bathing house.

 

In her Book „staying with the trouble“ Donna Haraway summarizes the Coexistence of different species under the term companion species. Boundaries between different species dissolve. Monat des Makaken aimed to move this multispecies society in the space of the visible. During selected evenings the bathing guests could enter the bath and go in co-existence with creatures, usually outside of the human field of vision, projected on the bathing hut.

 

The project opened different perspectives on how places can be experienced outside their usual narratives. The preparation of the bathtub, the act of bathing and the heating of the oven was understood as an ritual and performative act, which over the longer period of the project transformed the surrounding area and its sociotop.

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Certain bathing evenings where accompanied by interventions by Lissie Rettenwander, Peter Brandlmayer, Margit Busch, KünstlerInnenschaft Tirol and the Kids of Rapoldi <3