Thieves broke into the university building in Münster to steal technical equipment that was part of a work by the Japanese artist Koki Tanaka on display at the city’s Sculpture Projects, a festival that takes place every ten years.
Tanaka’s video project, Provisional Studies: Workshop #7 How to Live Together and Sharing the Unknown, will be temporarily closed to the public until the projection equipment and monitors can be replaced, Sculpture Projects Münster says. “We are trying to replace it quickly but it is complicated because there is a lot of technical equipment,” a spokeswoman adds. “The police are investigating it as a normal burglary.”
It is at least the third time that this edition of Sculpture Projects Münster has fallen victim to crime. A part of Ei Arakawa’s sculpture Harsh Citation, Harsh Pastoral, Harsh Münster was stolen on 17 June. In the night of 19 July to 20 July, a plaster figure in Nicole Eisenman’s work Sketch for a Fountain was vandalised too.
“We have to assume that art in a public space is at risk,” the spokeswoman says. “We don’t have a night guard because that would go against the concept. We have to live with it. Similar things happened in the last Sculpture Projects.”
Tanaka’s work focuses on eight people from different backgrounds whom he brought together to work on a variety of tasks.
