Taxy! to the Zircus

Now open at MetaLES, curated by Ux Hax, Romy Nayer and Lanjran Choche, is Taxy! to the Zircus, an interactive installation by Eupalinos Ugajin. I adjectify "installation" with "interactive" because the work fundamentally requires our corporeal interaction (or virtually so, at least) to see what it is: as we approach its various parts and piece, we're usually given an opportunity to "sit" on it, placing ourselves in a pose or animation that completes the artwork. That isn't to say the interaction makes the artwork more understandable — Eupalinos's work strikes me as delightfully absurd, with references to surrealism, Duchamp, Dada, Fluxus and a small dash of what Cage may have playfully called "purposeful purposelessness" — and indeed its meaning remains on certain levels impenetrable, which to me makes it all the most interesting — but without our direct participation we're not really viewing the completed piece of artwork. (It all reminded me of Merleau-Ponty saying, "We know not through our intellect but through our experience.")

If all that's sounding overly abstruse (and I'll mercifully leave it at that), just head over to Taxy! and enjoy it — it's an installation that's guaranteed to make you smile, with its jumble of associations and juxtapositions (is that cow holding a target for you as you're shot from a cannon?). You'll find as you arrive that you're invited to click on things, and they're either going to cause actions, or, more likely, through you into a pose or animation. Sometimes it's best to jump into mouselook as you're moved about, changing your perspective. The installation will be on display through the end of December, and, knowing Eupalinos, he might well add something new now and then. (If you fall to the ground you'll find, in a far corner of the sim, a place to leave a contribution to help support MetaLES.)