*1952, Luxembourg. Lives in Milan and Luxembourg.


Photographic Documentation and Archive of Manifesta 2:
Roman Mensing, Münster

Indepedent Sub-Curator project, 1998

In May 1998 Bert Theis inaugurated "Le Domaine de Marcel et Joseph" in the "Aquarium" of the Casino Luxembourg, the glass-covered terrace designed by Jean Prouvé. As Bert Theis has also been invited to take part in Manifesta 2, this permanent installation has naturally become part of the biennial.
The right half of the "Aquarium" has been transformed into a white space that visually nd acoustically communicates with the outside world. Deck-chairs, tropical plants and white curtains contribute to metamorphosing the "Aquarium" into a pleasant place of rest. Two Mynah birds, to whom the artist has been trying to teach quotations of Beuys and Duchamp, are meant to live in this large sanctuary. Like in his ephemeral installation for the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 1995 (a white facade behind which he put deck-chairs for visitors to rest), Bert Theis questions in a humorous and unpretentious way the experience of art and the role of the museum.
Specially for Manifesta 2, Bert Theis has conceived his "Independent Sub-Curator project". The project consists, on the one hand, of a workshop about Manifesta 2 and on art-making today for which purpose he has invited, in collaboration with the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, a series of young artists. The results of the workshop will be presented to the visitors of Manifesta 2 in the drawers of a small office bookcase. On the other hand, he organises the socalled "Dialectical Leap": on a thirty-minute trip, a perfumed and sonorised shuttle bus takes the participants to the Karl Marx House in Trier, in other words, from Manifesta 2 to the birthplace of the author of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, from Luxembourg to Germany, from the city of banks to the author of Das Kapital.

Casino Luxembourg; Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg; Trier


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