DESCRIPTION:
As part of James Beckett's contribution to the Scenographies project, he, together with former employees of SKOR | Foundation for Art in Public Space, hosted a live interpretation of a work by Art and Language. The piece involved the recreation of a project dating back to 1994.

This action was accompanied by a Red Krayola soundtrack provided by Amsterdam-based band NO|me.

Elaboration:

As a musing on the wonders of nature and the ability of science to elucidate, an art work by Art and Language is here revisited by artist James Beckett.* In a gesture set to recontextualise this work into the sphere of the cultural cuts, the new work stands in addition - to process the resulting closure of SKOR | Foundation for Art in Public Space. The original texts of Darwin, which appear in the work, are to be replaced in a live action, with disciplining exercises usually reserved for ill-behaved school children - here to be executed by former employees of SKOR. As a homage to the complexity and embedded politics inherent in the works of Art and Language, the action is extracting a work from the archives to bring light to the risk of dumbing down culture in favour of popular consent.

The accompanying soundtrack is a 75 minutes cover version by NO|me, of the original "Hurricane Fighter Plane" -- by psychedelic rock band Red Krayola (Texas), long time collaborators of Art and Language.

* In 1991 the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Culture, along with SKOR's predecessor, the PBK (Praktijkburo Beeldende Kunstopdrachten), commissioned a project by Art & Language at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.