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"Waste ground", although
it is often used to designate a fallow or an abando ned site, may
also mean, more loosely, but literally, an undefined and vague zone.
Somewhere between the public and the intimate point of view, Jan Kopp
leads us to a ground where the undefined and the vague, in spite of
ourselves, rul e over our feelings and sensibilities. From urban zones
to the worldwide web of internet, this young German artist tries,
through the works he presents i n public spaces, to raise within the
spectator's mind a need for introspection. In Poppy Hill, a project
intended for a Parisian suburb (1993), in a certain way followed up
in 1994 with the Berlin's Postdamer Platz action (in coopera tion
with Richard M殕ler), Jan Kopp's purpose was to disrupt the everyday
co mings and goings of the people in the neighbourhood. By sowing
thousands of poppy seeds in those deserted, fallow places, he wholly
disrupted the visual approach of those urban places, thus conferring
a modicum of functionality t o long-time abandoned sites.
The Looking at people passing by project (1996) also seems a significant
ill ustration of this traditional public space prospect : in this
case, Jan Kopp has followed the process established by French writer
Georges Perec in "An a ttempt at exhaustion of a Parisian scene*1".
As did the author, the artist s at outside a Parisian caf observing
every little event of everyday life. H is scrupulous observation of
these details was rendered by the gestual langu age of a ballet dancer,
whom he filmed on a video. The tape was constantly o n view on a screen
on the pavement area of the caf during six weeks, at op ening hours.
Every one of the onlookers of this new scene had to draw on the ir
own sensitivity in order to analyse the body language of the story-teller
. Thus Jan Kopp succeeded in reversing this peeping-tom process by
putting t he passer-by in his turn in the position of the observer.
Lately, the German artist has been interested in the possibilities
of intern et as a new type of public space. As he puts it himself,
it is all at once a public and an intimate area. In the way of old
almanacs, his project offers every day a new question to anyone caring
to enter its site. Being accessibl e to anyone, this offer is of course
public yet with a private dimension, as every user is alone in front
of his computer. this very seductive ambiguity soon enabled Jan Kopp
to use the web for a project which would hardly be pra cticable anywhere
else : link up two interactive photomat booths, thus quest ioning
the user about migration and identity.
Jan Kopp finally admits that the most exciting aspect of Internet
experiment is that one finds oneself again in a situation of sheer
discovery, on a fiel d that is absolutely untouched, unknown : in
other terms, a waste ground.
(art critic)
*1 - George PEREC, Tentative d'姿uisement d'un lieu parisien",
1983 Bourgoi s, Paris
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April 18 (Friday) - May 31 (Saturday), 1997 [Finished]
Opera City Tower First Floor , (ICC) 4th Floor lobby