Sisyphos

(Sisyphus)
Year 1988–99
Text by Pino Poggi

The design of a very large room with the following visible processes:

  1. Directly in front of the entrance to this room we will see two large black-grey stone blocks lying. A huge hill can be seen immediately in the large room. The blocks and the hill itself will of course be made of solid cardboard or Ytong/gypsum.
  2. Inside the room a white coloured road with a width of about two meters is built. This road divides again in two directions which lead upwards on the hill. They are paths approaching each other like in a circle and almost communicate with each other. But when they reach the top of the hill, they are blocked on both sides by an imposing mirror. This both-sided mirror must be as broad as the white road and with a minimum height of at least two metres. The participating audience is confronted in front of this mirror. This mirrored image should express the desperate and disappointed identity of the current audience. Any person wishing to participate in the AU Environment must take one of the black-grey stone blocks stored at the entrance and roll it up the hill. Although every participant already knows that the attempt will fail, the person keeps rolling the stone up to the top and tries to lay it down there. Without a hold, the stone rolls down the hill again to a place where a new audience can start from scratch.

The participants in the Sisyphos AU-Environment can only participate if stone blocks are available at the entrance. When the participating audience, rolling the stone blocks, reaches the hilltop, this basically will be the end of their own (futile) pilgrimage. This audience, like Sisyphus, will be ordered back to the top of the hill again and again, and those who want to continue playing can do the same. […]

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