Infinity+1
2003

30 min performance for the opening of From dust to dusk, 2 x 2 m white paper, white rubber balloon, helium, and a white string, The yard of The Royal Danish Art academy next to Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall, Copenhagen, October 2003

From Dust to Dusk was an exhibition based on the idea of bringing together artworks bordering on two aspects of non-materiality and non-visibility: the pure light – which in religious tradition is considered divine – and dust or dirt, base materials regarded as useless and impure. Still both have played crucial roles in 20th-century art, and continue to do so. It is enough to mention art movements like arte povera, land art and minimalism, or individual artists like Piero Manzoni, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson, or James Turrell to realize how central both dirt and light have become as artistic means.
From Dust to Dusk dealt with the basic physical qualities of both light and dirt/dust, but unavoidably also ended up in their symbolic values. All artists invited work with subtle material expressions, but their references moved towards a wide range of issues.
From Dust to Dusk was a title combining the settings “from dust to dust” (a phrase used at burials referring to the transitional nature of the human body, and “from dusk to dawn”, thus focusing on the opposite of light, i.e. darkness. The slightly romantic ring about the title was not a coincidence, but the exhibition was dominated by discrete expressions and intimate vocabularies since its general concept was to work with art that has very little materiality.

Inspired by the theme for the exhibition I made the following performance for the opening:
I entered the yard and started to fold a complicated star out of a big sheet of paper. Then I picked up a big bottle of helium and started to blow up a big white balloon. Finally, I attached the star to the balloon with a string and let fly into the sky. The balloon and star soon disappeared into the misty sky.

The idea was to put another star onto the sky, to add one more to the infinite number of stars, to make a little difference. It could also be seen as a reverted shooting star, and finally a star visible during the day.