Modified Social Benches

Audio transcription:

“Hello, my name is Jeppe Hein and I am a Danish German artist. I’m sitting right now outside of Berlin looking at the lake on a playground with my two children. I worked with benches for about 10 years. In 2000 I made my first bench, first asking myself where is a bench, why a bench, and why do you place a bench. Right now in society around the world, we are removing all these benches because we don’t want to have areas of social meeting points anymore. Because it has to be controlled. In Europe and in America you can rely on, sleep on, you can event stand on them. In China they’re doing different things and people meeting one or two persons at the same time. So what I think my benches can do is to re-question this idea about how you meet people, how you create social meeting points or places to stay. But also as an art object, a bench with a new twist can create happiness, can be a little spontaneous. If you have a bench with a loop that is opening or going up, you would question if it’s really a bench, can you sit on it, can you use it, or is it for sliding, just for standing, just for playing, or just there; what is it?”

To learn more about Modified Social Benches, visit dublinarts.org/publicart.