Creeping Death Brussels

(
2011
)

In 2010, the idea was developed to make an unannounced intervention at a major pop festival. After a year of secret preparations and planning with a team of about thirty volunteers, a plan was devised to bury a folding caravan, a mobile housing unit stacked with beers, on a festival terrain, six months before the festival took place in August of 2011. The plan was to excavate and set up the caravan during the second day of the festival. One of the scenarios was to stage an (uninvited) performance of a fictional cover band at the festival. Most major music festivals are built with the same mobile architectural elements: the typical metal fencing, mobile sanitary facilities, trucks, flight cases, light poles, dining and sleeping tents, etc. In terms of form, they closely resemble a type of non-recreational temporary demarcation such as army camps, refugee camps (and since 2021 also COVID testing and vaccination sites). Other similarities can also be found in the hierarchical organizational structure and strict access control. This blurring of forms and functions is essential in Philips’ oeuvre. One can also question the significance of these kinds of youth festivals as a ritual and how they relate to our daily lives. Pop festivals become increasingly popular, and therefore gain economic interest. It’s noticeable how more and more resources are being used in building a kind of decadent fake luxurious world that seems to contradict the alternative origins of the festivals. Philips’ guerrilla-style action was the result of researching the contradictions and supposed moral bankruptcy of music events, pressured by commerce and branding, increasingly bending the alternative to the exclusive. Another remarkable aspect was the unmistakable counter-pressure coming from the top whenever festivals and their significance were questioned directly or indirectly. There is of course a deliberate irony in the caricatural David vs. Goliath portrayal: a group of amateurs reflecting the organization of a festival by staging their own ‘resurrection from the underground’. This cartoonish seriousness and irony will be further refined and reinforced in later sculptures. In this project, Philips’ sculptural intervention was meant to re-think the concept of underground: to commemorate and redefine it. The title ‘Creeping Death’, referring to a well-known Metallica song from Philips’ birth year, took on an extraordinarily painful connotation when the festival was hit by an apocalyptic hail storm killing five people. The festival was therefore canceled after the first day. The only artistic remains of the planned intervention are instructional drawings, models and a video, all brought together under the title ‘7 M2’. From this point onward, elements from ‘Creeping Death’ keep coming back in Philips’ projects.

Installation view, Art Brussels, BE

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Prefer email? Contact me at info@karlphilips.org