For The Garden of Forking Paths, an outdoor sculpture project of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Argentinian artist Pablo Bronstein built the world’s smallest opera house on a hill near a farm near Zurich, Switzerland. Only 5 persons a time can listen to an aria from an opera by Alessandro Scarlatti.
The Garden of Forking Paths is a guest on the Froh Ussicht estate, owned by the Blum family in Samstagern (Zürich). Under the name Froh Ussicht, Martin Blum presents since 2008 art projects on his farmland. A video about the sculpture exhibition and an interview with the curator of the project and director of the Migros Museum, Heike Munder, is available here. More information about Pablo Bronstein’s work after the jump.
Pablo Bronstein’s “Performance of a Single Aria by Alessandro Scarlatti” takes place at the following dates: June 11 and 12, July 10, August 14, September 4, and October 2 and 30, 2011.
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Excerpt from the leaflet:
“In his drawings, models and installations, Pablo Bronstein (born 1977, Buenos Aires, Argentina) takes on architectural history and brings architectonic ideas from previous eras – in this instance, those of the 18th century – into the present. It is not only stylistic questions concerning the façade and construction that play a role here, so too do the mechanisms of power, emotion, longing and interaction that, in architecture, can also be manifested in an absurd manner and become points of refe rence and investigation. Bronstein’s constructions become stages for their user, and through performative moments extend the architectonic into the human.
The Pavilion, which has been created for the sculpture project, serves as the performance venue for the aria Qui del Sol gl’infausti lampi from the opera Agar et Ismaele Esiliati (1684) by Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725). With his pavilion offering space for just a few spectators, Bronstein highlights the exclusivity and “absurdity” of the Baroque garden design and, in a way quite his own, demonstrates how far “decadence” and here architecture too, always contains exclusive moments. Standing on the pavilion balcony the spectator has an overview of the landscape and can feel like the “lord” of all he/she surveys.”