SCULPTURE MASSAGE ongoing Performanceprojekt
(ab 2014)

"These feet should be massaged." That was my thought when I looked at the outstretched legs of the bronze clarinet player in Züllig Park in Arbon (Switzerland). This thought led me to massage my first sculpture on September 14, 2014: The Floating Woman (1955) by the Zurich sculptor Hermann Haller in the Seepark Rorschach. It was the beginning of the ongoing performance project Sculpture Massage. I have since massaged many more sculptures, in Switzerland, in various European cities and one on the coast of Western Australia. During a Sculpture Massage I take possession of a public work with my bare hands - kneading, rubbing, stroking - and bring it back to life in a metaphorical sense. During the massage, I am fully concentrated on the action. I experience a connection with the form and the material through the use of my body. The way a sculpture is made, its material (whether stone, bronze, metal or wood) and its shape also have an effect on my touch and movements. For example, the sculpture Large Spindle Piece, bronze 1974, by Henry Moore at Kings Cross Station London UK, the temporary Robert Walser sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn on Bahnhofplatz Biel CH, and the sculpture Helvetia auf Reisen, bronze 1980, by Bettina Eichin on the middle Rhine bridge in Basel, CH. I select the sculptures to be massaged on the basis of various criteria. Sometimes I am primarily interested in the authorship, sometimes the symbolic power or the historical background, as well as the location or simply the attraction it has for me. I like the encounter between dead matter and my body, as well as the ephemeral aspect of this action. Fortunately, the performative work Sculpture Massage stimulates new thought processes.