Love Space: (A Plan for the Perfect 24 hours)     (1997)

Love Space: (A Plan for the Perfect 24 hours)     (1997)

35mm slide image and audio installation documenting a Japanese maple tree’s visit to a Belgian nightclub’s dance floor and a  radio phone-in hosted by a gardener and a DJ.

Created for Para-Site, 1997, an exhibition curated by Kurt Vanbelleghem for the empty shops of the shopping mall Gulden Vlies/Toison d’Or in Brussels.

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The following is an excerpt of the transcript of the results of a live ‘phone-in’ to a professional DJ and a professional gardener that Chodzko organised at a radio station based in Brussels.
Members of the public were asked to recommend their ideal piece of music for the ‘perfect’ nightclub to the DJ or their ideal plant for the ‘perfect’ garden to the gardener. In turn both experts spoke of  their own personal choices for their respective spaces.
The dialogues were recorded and then edited to swap the calls made to the DJ with those made to the gardener, and vice versa.

DJ;        Yes, this is the DJ……… My question is, when you go out clubbing, what is the record that you would really like to hear played?

Caller;  Can it also be a flower? There’s nothing better than a rose,…… but my own preference is for poppies.

DJ;       It’s still  “Smells like Teen Spirit”?!!

Caller; I feel that life and death are brought together in the poppy.

DJ:       But how can you still  be into grunge, …..why?

Caller: Because you see when you pick it it’s dead,……. when you remove it from nature it just dies.

DJ;       But nowadays it’s just considered poor taste……..

Caller; Well, I think the rose symbolises many things…….

DJ;       But would you really like to dance to that kind of music if you were in a club?

Caller; I would like to have a garden where everything would be red.

DJ:       Don’t you find it embarrassing?

Caller;    I collect roses. I let them dry just before they lose their petals.

DJ;       ‘Roxanne’, by The Police ?!!

Caller; The Maple tree?…….. that also sounds exciting,….can you describe what it’s like?

DJ;       Well, for example,…if I went to a club I would like to hear something by Squarepusher,…… but even more, at the moment, Etienne de Crecy’s ‘Prix Choc’.

Caller; That is very beautiful,……..but I prefer it when a flower is completely opened up…

D.J;      Great! But I think we should stop right here…

Caller; Good-bye.

D.J.;     Bye!…

The installation also included a looped audio track using Prix Choc by Etienne de Crecy, mixed with a water loop from the intro to Swan Song by Can, and windchime, cymbals and birdsong from the intro to Flim Flam by Yellow Sox.

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Related works:

A Plan for the Perfect Night    (1992)
Plan for a Spell            (2001)
Adaptation  (2013)
Ants Choose Position for Sequins – 2 Seconds Interval   (2003)
Garden   (2007)
I See Through Every Image. (A souvenir for Laarni; A planting template for Belladonna seeds), 2013  
O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix  (2020)
Nightvision    (1998)
Synthetic Copse: Our Ash Hospital    (2018)      
The Green, the Flow, the Path of the Game    (2021)
The Pickers    (2009)  
The woods shall rise up in those places where you pause    (1995)
…reached. So, deltoid-bodhi-leaf-shield…    (2020)