LABY-FOOT

As part of the 1 + 1 biennial, organised jointly by the Casino Luxembourg and the Fonds Kirchberg, the artist Benedetto Bufalino (born in 1982 in Décines; lives and works in Paris) was invited to submit a work for the plant labyrinth of the Kirchberg Central Park. The artist’s approach consists of investing urban space, playing with the architecture of given places and offering, with his funny or poetic installations, an offbeat reinterpretation of reality.
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L’installation Laby-Foot de l’artiste Benedetto Bufalino se trouve à proximité du Centre National Sportif et Culturel d’Coque à Luxembourg-Kirchberg. Comme son nom l’indique, Laby-Foot est un terrain de football réinventé pour le labyrinthe végétal du parc central du Kirchberg. Ses formes et ses matériaux insolites permettent au public de l’explorer, de participer à des matchs de football et d’en repenser les règles.

The weight of light
Light, as we usually interpret it, is an element without mass and gravity. For “the weight of light” a physics engine simulates the kinetic forces of a moving object. This mass is projected on a wave shaped structure in virtual space. The moving object is represented as a light particle in physical space. Gravity, mass, density and friction affect velocity and acceleration of these light particles. As the particles movement is based on a simulation, it does not have to adhere to the physical realities we know from everyday life. Therefore the installation goes beyond expected behaviour. Thus the matter of light traverses a reinterpretation of our known reality.

Inverso Mundus
The title of the work, Inverso – both an Italian “reverse, the opposite” and the Old Italian “poetry,” and Mundus – the Latin “world,” hints at a reinterpretation of reality, a poetic vision. In our interpretation, the absurdist scenes from the medieval carnival appear as episodes of contemporary life in a multichannel video installation. Characters act out scenes of absurd social utopias and exchange masks, morphing from beggars to rich men, from policemen to thieves. Metrosexual street-cleaners are showering the city with refuse. Female inquisitors torture men on IKEA-style structures. Children and seniors are fighting in a kickboxing match. Inverso Mundus is a world where chimeras are pets and the Apocalypse is entertainment.