From Artdaily.org:
As of December 10 the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion will be the object of an intervention that reflects on the use of buildings and our concept of them as unique, unalterable spaces. The artist Ai Weiwei, one of the leading – and most controversial – figures of Chinese contemporary art, will fill the Pavilion pools with two elements that, though very common in our everyday lives, are totally foreign to architectural construction. He will replace the water of the two pools, one exterior and the other interior, with milk and coffee, respectively.
In the words of the artist himself, ‘my intervention explores the metabolism of a living machine (…). In fact, the building is not static: the content of the two pools is replaced all the time, unnoticed to visitors’. Indeed, it seems that the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion is permanently still, but this is not the case, and Ai Weiwei proffers a reflection on this apparent stillness: ‘Upkeeping the condition of milk and coffee is the same as preserving a body, a demanding effort against light, air, warmth…’. In total, the two pools will be filled with 65 tons of milk and 15 tons of coffee, which will be kept in the open air.
This intervention forms part of a series of installations that a number of plastic artists and architects from all over the world have created and will create for the emblematic Mies van der Rohe building. Essentially short-lived, they propose new ways to perceive the architecture of the Pavilion. The programme of installations is a kind of activity that is unique in the city and based on the exceptional spaces of the Pavilion. Those who have created installations for the Pavilion include Antoni Muntadas; Jeff Wall; Dennis Adams; the architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue; and the SANAA team formed by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.
See also past posts on Ai Weiwei.
