Rirkrit Tiravanija
On Making Less

paperback
12 cm x 16 cm
128 pages

English

with texts and works by: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Masanobu Fukuoka, Jenny Schlenzka, Julia Grosse

edited by Jenny Schlenzka and Julia Grosse

design: Stoodio Santiago da Silva

released in connection with the exhibition Rirkrit Tiravanija: Das Glück ist nicht immer lustig.

This is the first title in the new book series The Practice – What Moves Artists by Gropius Bau, that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time.

ISBN 978-3-948546-24-3

Eine deutsche Ausgabe ist hier erhältlich.

Making less may seem contradictory considering climate change, turbo-capitalism and political gridlock. Yet for Rirkrit Tiravanija, it is a crucial practice that has shaped him for many years and has rarely seemed as relevant as it does right now: using fewer resources; intervening less and observing more; looking less at results and more at the process. It can also mean collecting fewer objects in museums or accumulating fewer artworks in galleries and instead using these spaces for cooking, playing table tennis or spending the night. For Tiravanija as an artist, it can even mean deciding not to make art at all and instead renting a rice field to collectively test methods of sustainable energy production. Or it can mean simply waiting to see what happens.

In this book, Rirkrit Tiravanija compiles various ideas and approaches to this method on 128 pages, including an essay from the 1970s about “Do-Nothing Farming” by Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer of today’s organic farming. He also shares a fast recipe for a Negroni, a slow recipe for fish sauce and instructions for composting, and provides insights into his process-oriented work.