Double Book Launch: The Games Are Open and Deadhead
The Games are Open documents the transformation of Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser’s bulldozer sculpture that occupied interim lands on the edge of Vancouver’s Olympic Village, while Deadhead explores the process and ideas behind Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s ambitious floating artwork.
Holly Ward on Köbberling & Kaltwasser – pdf
Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser’s The Games are Open presently takes the form of an oversized bulldozer that sits on the west side of Vancouver’s Southeast False Creek’s Olympic Village. A gargantuan mock-up of the very machine that was recently used to raze the surface upon which it sits, the object appears to be permanent, dominating and perhaps even obtuse. Appearances, in this case, can be misleading. Rather than a static example of ‘plop art’, this colossal model performs a dialectical dance between notions of legacy and the forces of entropy, operating in turn as both monument and anti-monument.
Köbberling & Kaltwasser: The Games Are Open
As South East False Creek began its new life as Canada’s largest ‘green’ housing development, the Berlin-based artist team of Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser used materials recycled from the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Athletes’ Village to create a situation of exchange and cooperation. On lands slated for future development, the artists created a 6 x 7 x 14m artwork that invited the participation of new neighbours to liberate the discarded, share excess, and contribute to the building of new forms and meanings.