daniel buuren monumenta

Performance and work in situ presented in various places (museums, theatres, exhibitions), initially in Genazzano in Italy, in 1982, as part of a group project called “La zattera di Babele” [The Raft of Babel].

The work is an hour-long public performance, during which paper is pasted up and then torn down. For forty minutes, five actors paste coloured striped paper on the wall, according to the artist’s instructions. The white stripes must be exactly aligned. The spectators see colours and shapes appearing and disappearing as successive layers are added. Then for the remaining twenty minutes, the actors, still directed by the artist, tear off the freshly pasted papers to reveal fragments of the previous layers. The spectators watch the evolution of work on a picture that is never finished and whose successive stages are recorded only in their memory. After the performance, the whole piece is destroyed.