NPEP – Nice Places Exploration Program
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Daniela Brasil and Catherine Grau
site-specific, process-based installation for the public art project Nice Places 2013/14
comissioned by < rotor > Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst with the Institut für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Steiermark and the Steirischen Dachverband der offenen Jugendarbeit.
A group of selected artists was invited to produce sculptural installations in collaboration with youth centers of rural towns surrounding Graz. The theme of the investigation was to appropriate and reclaim ‘nice places’ for youth to use and be in. Together with the youth center Frohnleiten (JUZ+0815) Daniela Brasil and Catherine Grau created the Nice Places Exploration Program. Currently NPEP consists of a geodesic observation station and a mobile bathtub explorer, both produced with and installed/parked at the youth center Frohnleiten.
A main concern of NPEP is to utilize and highlight the circumstance of Frohnleiten being home to one of Austria’s largest landfills. The constructed sculptures were built from materials sourced in local junkyards. Using raw material waste while referencing the 50’s futuristic research of Buckminster Fuller and the experimental principles of Black Mountain College, NPEP takes us on a journey through the idyllic landscape of Frohnleiten, seeking to interject nice places with an investigation on waste production.
official blog: http://npep-observatory.tumblr.com
operation “comfort zone”
https://www.museum-joanneum.at/kioer/programm/events/event//daniela-brasil-catherine-grau
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