This morning at 10 a.m., in partnership with Creative Time, 21c Museum Hotel Durham hoisted the twelfth public artwork in the nationwide Pledges of Allegiance series, Untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag).
The message of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s flag is a reference to German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, the English translation of ‘Angst essen Seele auf’. The film first appeared in Tiravanija’s Untitled 1994 (Fear Eats the Soul), a bar he constructed at Esther Schipper’s storefront gallery in Cologne that served only beer and cola. Fassbinder’s two lead characters, a German cleaner and a Moroccan mechanic, meet in the film’s opening scene over the aforesaid drinks, and commence an unlikely relationship that brings out their own deepest fears as much as the xenophobia and racism of their surroundings.
Tiravanija’s flag will be raised across the following twenty-one locations:
- Creative Time Headquarters – 59 E 4th St, New York, NY
- 21C Museum Hotel Durham – 1 11 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
- Atlanta Contemporary – 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
- Blue Star Contemporary – 116 Blue Star, San Antonio, TX
- California College of the Arts – 1 111 8th St, San Fransisco, CA
- The Commons, in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas -1340 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS
- Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University – 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY
- John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University – 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI 02906
- KMAC Museum – 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
- Light City – Baltimore’s waterfront from the South Shore of the Inner Harbor to Harbor East,Baltimore, MD
- MASS MoCA – 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247
- Mid-America Arts Alliance – 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
- Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit – 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
- Pratt Institute – 200 Willoughby Avenue , South Hall 1, Brooklyn, NY
- RISD Museum – 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
- SPACE – 536 Congress Street, Portland, ME
- Texas State Galleries – 233 West Sessom Drive, San Marcos, TX
- The Union for Contemporary Art – 2423 N 24th Street, Omaha, NE
- University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum – 3821 USF Holly Dr, Tampa, FL
- Wassaic Project – 3 7 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic, NY
- Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University – 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ
> Learn more about the project
ABOUT RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961 and grew up in Thailand, Ethiopia and Canada. His practice defies media-based description combining traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action.
ABOUT CREATIVE TIME
Creative Time, the New York based public arts non-profit, is committed to working with artists on the dialogues, debates, and dreams of our time. Creative Time presents the most innovative art in the public realm, providing new platforms to amplify artists’ voices, including the Creative Time Summit, an international conference convening at the intersection of art and social justice.
Since 1974, Creative Time has produced over 350 groundbreaking public art projects that ignite the imagination, explore ideas that shape society, and engage millions of people around the globe. Since its inception, the non-profit organization has been at the forefront of socially engaged public art, seeking to convert the power of artists’ ideas into works that inspire and challenge the public. Creative Time projects stimulate dialogue on timely issues, and initiate a dynamic experience between artists, sites, and audiences.
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag) . Photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of Creative Time.
