press release
Pharadnoia*
Stephan Köperl and Sylvia Winkler live in mid-Stuttgart and use the bicycle as their main means of transport. They are convinced that this is the most favourable way of moving. They consider cycling as an everyday routine and are glad to move like the wind with their own power.
The artists like the considerations of the recently dead civilization critic Ivan Illich. In his theory "cars impede the traffic" he concludes that the transport of people -considering all following costs as accidents, environmental pollution etc. - asks for too high a price if it allows at any point of the system higher velocities than can be achieved with the bicycle.
Against this background and from their own experience in the daily traffic of a city where the automobile is so emphatically glorified as hardly anywhere else, they experience the motor traffic as mainly structural violence. As a threat to avoid they are not only forced to use detours and to break traffic rules but also to think about their own vulnerability in case of colliding.
With their installation "Pharadnoia" Winkler/Köperl celebrate the unsurpassed achievement of the invention of the bicycle and express at the same time their fear of becoming collateral cripples of the transport of people through a small inattentiveness, through one single inadvertence.
* "Pharadnoia" is an artificial word, evoking in its German pronunciation associations between the notions "Fahrrad" (Fahrrad = German for bicycle) and "Paranoia"
Opening and Performance on June 6th, 7 pm
introduction: Dr. Andrea Jahn
Duration of the exhibition June 7th Ð 29th
Tu - So 11.00 - 6.00 / We 11.00 - 6.00
Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
Schlossplatz 2 / 70173 Stuttgart, Germany/ phone: +0049 - 711 - 22 33 70