The Apple from the Eye of the Worm (2000)

Nina Könnemann

View of Nina Könnemann, The Apple in the Eye of the Worm, 2000, color video (on monitor). Apple Car Service, Hull, UK. View of Nina Könnemann, The Apple in the Eye of the Worm, 2000, color video (on monitor). Apple Car Service, Hull, UK Ⓒwww.artforum.com

The Apple from the Eye of the Worm, 2000, Könnemann’s only public art installation, consisted of a video animation playing on a loop in the waiting room of the Apple Car Service in Hull, UK, a town known for its parties and funfairs. In Könnemann’s documentation of the intervention, which she calls “a video for drunk people,” the animation fits seamlessly into the absurdity of the waiting-room antics. A motley crew of drunk, stoned, or otherwise out-of-it kids are gathered in a red storefront on a bustling street, waiting to be taken home to bed. They smoke, eat pizza, and erupt in inebriated argument. Two giggling young women in party dresses let their attention drift to an upper corner of the room, where Könnemann’s spazzy animation plays on a wall-mounted monitor, rolling, slot machine–like, through images and logos. The content of the animation seems arbitrary, until one notices that the emblems, gum wrappers, cartoons, candy bars, and toys, their gaudy packaging covered in English, French, or German exclamations, all feature apples. All night long the apple video scrolls down the screen, omnipresent yet mostly unnoticed. As useless and indeterminate as Könnemann’s gesture may be, it is its own kind of sabotage, inserting into the existing system an element that impedes or alters its function.

Source : https://www.artforum.com/print/201101/openings-nina-koennemann-27055