discoteca flaming star

Notes on a workshop for „Spring never comes again – Children and art in the 20th and 21st century“

Discoteca Flaming Star and kids in the Dollhouse Museum at Zacheta Warsaw 2023

Looking at old photos showing the Bauhaus artist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, who developed among other things a pedagogical dollhouse, we remembered so fondly the Laurie Simmons Dollhouse that belonged to two little girls named Lally and Mardet.
Most of all, we remembered the long note they had attached to the house saying, „Don’t you dare ever touch the dollhouse – we’ve had bad, bad, bad experiences.“ This was a direct result of another child breaking the beautiful arrangements the girls had made.

Knowing how serious play is for children for various reasons, one might think of a museum as a dollhouse for artists. It means, spells, signifies, refers to the world.

One group of works by Discoteca Flaming Star, that we create and carry around the world since 2001, are the Banners. These are pieces of fabric, being glued together or sewn, with painted text. They serve as backdrop curtains for many of the performances, as spatial transformation within whom disorders are formed into words. The texts are references – cryptical thoughts – we carry around for months. Thoughts about artistic work, as for example „innocence & mystery“ relates to Buñuels filter for his films. They also represent concepts that reflect the relation of our art to the different layers of daily experience of artists and spectators. They are think-text-iles.

Our Banners could point to the museum as this long note from Lally and Mardet did for the dollhouse.

We will spend a day with children at the National Gallery in Warsaw around, in front of, and playing in the dollhouse version of the museum. We want to think and talk and design mini-banners for the dollhouse to wish for it, to protect it, to occupy it, to dream about it, …

Discoteca Flaming Star, Berlin, 21.3.2023