Tekst: Esther Darley, prospects & concepts, februari 2019

Volgens Joost Elschot (1985) is de West-Europese maatschappij veranderd in een georganiseerde structuur waarin steeds minder plek is voor falen en toeval. Met interventies, installaties, films en tekeningen wil hij een zekere absurde directheid weer in de maatschappij brengen. Dat doet hij vanuit een sterke do-it-yourself mentaliteit die hij overhield aan zijn ervaringen als automonteur in Ghana, waardoor hij met nieuwe ogen naar de westerse samenleving keek. Zo leidde een pizza in Afrika en zijn constatering dat pizzeria’s in Berlijn door verschillende culturen werden gerund tot zijn project Good Pizza Bad Pizza waarbij hij met lokale ingrediënten nieuwe pizzavarianten bedacht en zo in een performance de multiculturele samenleving tegemoet trad. Topinambur Records ontstond rondom een zelfgebouwde gitaar en werd een project waarin hij geluid, film, fotografie, ontmoetingen, tekeningen en sculptuur samenbracht. Naast een oude bus – die al eerder onderwerp vormde van een installatie – is de gitaar een terugkerend item in zijn werk dat hij beschouwt als een avontuur waarvan de uitkomst nooit vastligt en hij zich graag laat voeden door verhalen en oplossingen uit andere culturen. In een van zijn strips vatte hij het mooi samen: “a story of a 29 year old former West-African car mechanic, raised on the Dutch Countryside, trying to find his way to deal with the world. Includes: romanticism, absurdism, existentialism, pragmatism, functionalism, slapstick. Oh, and making art.” La chatte chaude (2018), ontstond vanuit Elschots fascinatie voor het gekrijs van krolse katten en een gedicht dat hij schreef voor een aanloopkat. Het behang en de ventilator kwamen toevallig op zijn pad. Deze toevallige verbindingen vormen de basis voor een bijna surrealistische enscenering.

Text: Janine Eisenächer, january 2016, Berlin

Joost Elschot

Good Pizza, Bad Pizza 

Performance

In his artistic work, Joost Elschot employs diverse practices and media through which he reflects upon personal experiences and life situations, social relationships and cultural phenomena, and through which he raises questions that are relevant on a local as well as on a global scale. In his drawings, sculptures, performances, videos and music – often developed and presented in interplay -, he connects everyday life and art in an often humorous way that nevertheless points subtly to a rather serious matter. This results to a certain extent from improvisation - as an attitude towards life, as a concept of living and working. This conception is partly related to the time Elschot spent in Ghana, where he has lived for two years and has earned his living as a car mechanic, as to traveling in general, but also it is related to being an artist – from an economic as well as from a creative perspective. By working with what's there, from what surrounds him – materialwise and perceptionwise -, Elschot creates open and vivid works that are accessible on various levels in form and content.

In his performance Good Pizza, Bad Pizza, the final presentation of his residency, Elschot creates a mixture of an exhibition and kitchen situation, a place for people to meet and to exchange. He invites the guests and passers-by to buy and eat the pizza he is making. They can choose between four different ones just from their image. In picking pizza as a globally well-known food that is produced in all sorts of variations throughout the world, depending on what groceries locally exist, are eaten or used in cooking, he refers not only to cooking as an important cultural and social practice, and to the migration of goods or food in general – Who has invented pizza? Where does the tomato come from? What else can be used for cheese if you don't have or eat any? -, but also to the migration, transfer and transformation of cultural knowledge and imagery. Like putting together the ingredients for a pizza, layer by layer, Elschot combines different artistic media building this work: a sculpture that serves as the kitchen table and pizza kiosk at once, videos that display his experiences with pizza making in Ghana (including the singing of a recipe) on a small fake TV, drawings related to various sorts of beer and the German purity law, his being, doing and talking alongside everything. This humorous mix or juxtaposition lets one not only think of TV cooking shows – a pop-cultural format Elschot plays with as well (performance and artist talk at once) -, it also hints at the fact how diverse and mixed, how much moving and changing cultures, cultural practices and knowledge are, and it brings to mind how certain people or political powers within not only the German society try to claim a purity of a (national) culture. Elschot easily moves with and through this performance like with and through life. We can join him in this process between success and failure, and we can taste his good and bad pizza - the taste of life. 

Joost Elschot is the fourth stipend in the residency programme of HKU in cooperation with Stichting Stokroos at Flutgraben e.V.