BLOCH

Project Page: www.bloch23781.com

BLOCH is an inter- and multidisciplinary project linking contemporary art with folk culture. The project's participatory and performative live events and productions will alter our conventional ways of understanding customs, traditions, festivals, and processions.

The direct products and outcome of the project will include a traveling tree trunk ("the Bloch"), physical impressions of the tree in the places it visits, and related cultural and social events (festivals, processions) as well as a series of short films.
Specifically, the project centers an old Carnival custom from the Appenzell region. Every other year, the last fir tree felled that winter is decorated and pulled by twenty men -- on a wagon outfitted with driver, two musicians, and a blacksmith with a smoking oven -- from the village of Urnäsch to neighboring Herisau and back. At the end of the day-long procession, the trunk is auctioned off on the Urnäsch town square to the highest bidder and a masquerade ball follows in the evening. 
In the past, the Bloch has been purchased at the auction by one of the locals to be put to practical use (as material for furniture or shingles, for example.) But in 2011, the buyers were the Swiss artist duo Com&Com. Now the artists plan to give the trunk a new role: instead of simply traveling the relatively short distance between the two villages before ending up as building material, the Bloch will travel the world, leaving traces -- physical and symbolic, artistic and social -- wherever it goes. In a series of stages, the Bloch will visit various countries, entering into a dialog with cultures and people foreign to it. At the end of this journey, the trunk will return back to its starting point in Urnäsch, Switzerland.

For more information, photos, videos and Bloch's next stations, visit:  www.bloch23781.com