Hot Pot – Spicy Little Art Festival
The Bloom Room is a performative installation by Ana Banana, Cimon Finix, Bruce Lee U

Saturday, 21 November, 5pm
Kai Tak Campus, Academy of Visual Arts

Three people in a room. Painting, composing, filming. Neck-deep.
Trying to make it bloom. Boom.

The Final End

An Interview with “The F*cking Dead Banana”

Ralf the raging Reporter (R): Wow, that was quite a thing you delivered there on Saturday at the “Hot Pot Art Festival”.
The F*cking Dead Banana (FDB): (laughs) Yeah, wasn’t it? I guess we guess it was. (laughs again).
R: Definitely. You left me stunned, yet at the same time puzzled. I mean if I had to explain to someone what happened there at the Baptist University I’d have some trouble, I suppose.
FDB: Really? Well after all you’re the reporter here, we’re just artists (laughs hard). No, seriously speakin’, as often in the art game, as we like to call it, there is not so much to figure out, to understand. It is what it was: A room filled with 1,5 tons of soil, 3 performers and a subwoofer (laughs).
R: Not to forget the acrylic paint, the fluorescent lights and the live video.
FDB: Exactly. Those were the ingredients. And with those the goal was to make the room bloom.
R: Boom(laughs) Wonderful, just wonderful. Actually i caught myself trying to figure out how you got to this crazy final idea.
FDB: You see working on a theme like plants can be a tough one. (laughs) Cause even if you keep on narrowing down, sharpening and framing the artistic approach, this wild and wide topic still leaves you in a jungle of aesthetic possibilities. A hell lot of questions arise: Where do you want to go into? Where is it rewarding to dig deeper, to grow roots? And how the heck do you spread out from there again, flourishing, without getting lost?
R: So what for heaven’s sake did you do then? Did you think about giving up?
FDB: Nah! Never. (laughs) For the three of us two decisions concerning the final format were fundamental: first of all we wanted to work within a room, to create a rather immersive installation. Secondly the outcome should be connected to us, our personalities and friendship. Still we must not leave our self-chosen bone of contention, the frickin’ plants, and also engrave our artistic expertise in it. So we found our common ground in the process of blooming. This seemed to be the connecting point of our creative interests and also a satisfying translation for the rise and decay of human companionship. In general (laughs).
R: Well said, well said.
FDB: That’s standard or why do you think we’re called the f*cking dead banana(laughs hard). Again, at a certain point we knew that we wanted to change the perspective: away from the plants as real living objects diving deep into the metaphorical sphere. And so after all our research on plants had an abstract outcome. In our final work the audience witnessed a subtle development, an interpretation and homage to the plants.
R: Did you ever think about performing naked?
FDB: (laughs) What? No! Man what’s wrong with you that’s just weird.
R: Thanks for these astonishing insights.
FDB: (laughs hard)

Bloom Room by Ana-Maria Negrea, Bruce Liu,  Simon Dietersdorfer