Odradek — Sightings at Circa 106
A shape-shifting kinetic sculpture made of kite materials that "visited" a shared Bremen apartment for five nights during lockdown. The only documentation is the drawings the inhabitants made of it.
A kinetic sculpture built from kite materials — wooden rods and translucent threads — left for five nights in the living room of a shared apartment in Bremen. Always quietly moving and changing shape, it could not be photographed in any way that captured it. Instead, the inhabitants and visitors of the apartment were given drawing materials and asked to draw what they saw. Those drawings are the work.
The piece takes its name and form from Franz Kafka's Die Sorge des Hausvaters ("The Cares of a Family Man"), where Odradek is an impossible, shape-shifting creature that visits houses — "made of the same materials as a kite: wooden rods and threads, entangled in each other." It also appears in Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings.
Concept
"My idea was for this creature to visit Circa. I imagined a shape-shifted Odradek, made of broken kites, wandering in Circa at night. Or the other way around: a broken kite, shape-shifted into an Odradek. … Circa, at this present moment, is just a house, like any other. No exhibitions, no gatherings. That's why the Odradek was there. This animated thing decided to be present, when no one else from the outside could."
A photograph would have killed it — Odradek "has no defined shape, it's a literature character, it's made from words and images in our heads." The drawings are intentionally another layer of interpretation, intimate to whoever held the pen, registering the state of both the drawer and the creature at that moment.
Exhibitions
- Shape Shifting | Sightings at Circa 106 — Bremen (DE), 9–17 February 2021. Online during pandemic lockdown. Curated/led by Lucas Odahara in conversation with the participating artists. Odradek "sighted" at Circa 106 on the night of 10 February and remained for five nights.