What might it be like to fall into a wormhole, or become trapped inside a spider’s web? ‘Tape Paris’ by Numen / For Use invites visitors to find out for themselves, by inviting them inside web-like tunnels suspended over the entrance of Paris’s Palais de Tokyo museum. As a part of the ‘Inside’ exhibition, curated by Jean de Loisy, Daria de Beauvais, and Katell Jaffres, Tape Paris uses over 27 miles of transparent Scotch tape to form an immense, immersive installation, one that looks an awful lot like Shelob’s lair from ‘Lord of the Rings’.
According to Thecreatorsproject.vice.com, Numen / For Use is a Croatian/Austrian design collaborative that was formed by industrial designers, Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler and Nikola Radeljkovic in 1998. For Tape Paris, the trio came together from different parts of Europe to create an otherworldly experience, one that “reveals glimpses of its organic innards.” On the Numen / For Use’s website, the artists state that, “the journey through [Tape Paris] constitutes the first stage in the exploration of an inner space that is physical as much as it is mental.”
Floating Structure
The floating structure hangs over the high ceilings and entrance of the building, forming both a feast for the eyes and a futuristic playground. Five museum visitors at a time are allowed to enter and wander through its soft architecture. The translucent tape allows for participants to feel both removed from the tunnel-vision induced by similarly enclosed spaces, and connected to the museum visitors below them.
The exhibition commissioned 30 artists to cover two floors of the museum with their ideas on interiors, and of space as a metaphor. The curators’ statement says that, when moving “from one installation to the next, we remain constantly immersed in the works, which lead us within ourselves—from our skin to our most intimate thoughts.”
‘Tape Paris’ will run through January 11, 2015.
