CHILDREN'S GAMES (PUZZLED)

CHILDREN’S GAMES (PUZZLED)

CHILDREN’S GAMES (PUZZLED), VIDEO 48'00", 2020

The attempt to make a 4000 piece puzzle depicting the classic painting Children’s Games (1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, forms the focal point of the video work Children’s Games (Puzzled) that explores how, and if, the repetitive and playful pastime activity of jigsaw puzzles might serve as a productive terrain for the construction of a community, where knowledge sharing can take shape through conversation. Filmed from a bird’s-eye view, over the course of a week, it records the artists in the company of several groups of invited artists, art workers, thinkers and their children, gathered around the slow creation of the jigsaw puzzle. Bruegel’s painting is overwhelming in terms of detail and completely unique in its choice of playful children as the central motif. Albeit never completed in Children’s Games (Puzzled), the image becomes a springboard for discussions and musings among the many voices, hands and heads taking part; from conversations about play and knowledge, the city, and the role of art in society, to the role of children in urban space and the potentiality of art processes that fail. Through an open-ended and self-reflective approach to collaborative investigation and ‘learning by doing’, questions of what might be termed participation, creation and knowledge production within the context of contemporary art are raised.

The work was produced for the exhibition “Learning By Doing: A Politics Of Practice” at SixtyEight Art Institute. Curated by Line Ellegaard.

FACTORY WORKERS UNITE is a collaborative factory space for working and thinking shared by Tina Helen and Søren Thilo Funder. It forms an ongoing investigation of the physical, cultural, cognitive and social factory, comprising factory floors of warehouses, archives, assembly lines, artist studios, museum spaces, reading rooms, shopping malls, lecture halls, sports arenas, political assemblies, nature experiences, holiday retreats, family structures, media platforms, game systems, cybernetic networks, playgrounds, love lifes, unions and friendships.