Floating castle
2002

2-week performance and installation
4 x 6 x 5 m. Recycled wood, metal pontoon, nails and screws, kings costume & paper crown,
Artgenda, Oberhafen, Hamburg, Germany

As part of the youth biennale Artgenda, for all the countries around the Baltic Sea I was invited as a representative from Copenhagen. I decided to build a floating castle, which functioned as both an installation and an ongoing performance.

In the beginning, the King was all alone in his castle, hammering, sawing, and drilling all day long, working hard to erect his little kingdom. When the castle was almost finished the King became more sociable and it was now possible to visit the King on his castle, via a small ferry. The King was there the humble host, who was welcoming people and making them feel well and at home. The castle now functioned as a contemplative space. The visitors could climb into the towers, sit and read fairytales in the small library or talk with the King, and they were welcome to stay as long as they wanted. The castle also was open during some nights, where the atmosphere was especially romantic.
Within the castle, there also was a small interactive installation, which was about 15 different pairs of golden woman shoes, al in different sizes. Everyone, also men, where allowed to try the shoes on to see if any of them fitted them.

This project is a continuation of my earlier works dealing with a return to childhood and fairytales. But where those projects more was dealing with the confrontation between dream and reality, this project seems more about trying to blur these two aspects into another- though there still is a clash between dream and reality in the choice of building- material. The trashy second-hand wood is very different from what castles normally are build of. Symbolic the floating mobile castle can be read in different ways. The mobile castle suggests autonomy and something playful, as well as a contrast to the normal solid castle. The fact that the castle is floating and the aspect of water also suggests something dreamlike, something that will disappear again, something which might just be a dream.