AES+F: The Feast of Trimalchio

From the Witte De With website

Between You and I is a joint project by SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space) and Witte de With that takes place between the Fall of 2009 and the Summer of 2010. Four international artists will be commissioned to intervene on Witte de With’s façade in order to create a critical interface dealing directly with the urban fabric of the city of Rotterdam.

The first intervention, The Feast of Trimalchio, is a work by Russian artist group AES+F.

Part of Morality, the interventions aim to re-imagine and re-negotiate the limits of public engagement with the institution.

Between You and I strives to open a space to reflect about morality today, inviting an active response by the public concerning the presence of contemporary art in public spaces.

The Feast of Trimalchio continues the ironic epic set in the real and virtual world of our time, an epic first presented in Last Riot, shown in the Russian pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). The heroic and senseless battle of immortal gods in a virtual Valhalla is replaced by an attempt to create a model of Heaven, embodied in the image of the ideal hotel with its guests, primarily representatives of the Golden Billion, and its service personnel, who come from the rest of the world. Like patricians and slaves during the celebration of Saturnalia, the guests and servants of the hotel change places, living out their capricious fantasies. Like a shared dream, an eternal pleasure unites the characters, but a feeling of anxiety and oncoming catastrophe is ever present among the inhabitants of this artificial island Paradise.

Research Adrian Robb