At the original Greek symposion, there was a lot of boozing. But not only that: there was eating, dancing, singing, philosophising. People enjoyed physical and intellectual delights, in and as a community. However, this also reflected an extremely patriarchal society: only free citizens – that is men – were allowed to take part. Women (and male slaves) provided hospitality and entertainment and served as objects of sexual pleasure for the participants.
This symposion, on the other hand, aims to be open, egalitarian, playful, collective. Ritual components are, as in the Greek symposion, certain furniture and drinking vessels. The terry cloth objects are reminiscent of Greek columns, but are made from used towels – soft, colourful and fluffy instead of hard, sturdy, masculine. The ceramic objects are made of fragments of old cups and mugs, between which a mass oozes out, revealing itself on the inside as wrinkled skin, shining with moisture. The source material comes from friends and acquaintances of the artist – thus the objects incorporate the collective thought and at the same time, as things of everyday physical contact, refer to the bodily, sensual side of the symposium.
As a utopian idea, this new symposion awaits its realisation – the audio imagines a meditative journey there and beyond, into a speculative future in which the individual, together with his or her sexuality, is absorbed into the collective: into a “global mucous membrane”.
The works of Dirk Reimes depart from experiences, observations and findings from a seemingly unremarkable everyday life. We are all involved and interwoven in its processes and structures – as consumers, employees, lovers. What manifests itself in Dirk Reimes’ works is not only the questioning of one’s own identity, but always also of its social constitution. Who are we as social beings, what does it mean to be human? Dirk Reimes explores these questions with humour, poetry and self-irony.
