Jochen Dehn with Francesco Pedraglio at Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, 29 June

Jochen Dehn with Francesco Pedraglio

Abstract objects and the ship of Theseus

Friday 29 June, 5.30pm

For this session for Wide Open School, Jochen Dehn collaborates with artist and writer Francesco Pedraglio, whose work has involved suppositions, rumours and superstitions, invisibility and abstraction. When writing and performing, Pedraglio focuses on the practical and conceptual difficulties of storytelling, especially the problem of 'making sense' in English, a language that is not his own. In his short stories words take on a life beyond the printed page, becoming physical bodies in three-dimensional space.

Jochen Dehn's performances often consist of lessons, demonstrations, workshops or experiments, each of which is doomed to partial failure. In a recent series of performances, he reflected on sculpture's value and worth, focusing on five objects, including a hole in the ground and a lump of ashphalt, which he transformed into obstacles inside the gallery. And that was just the beginning of the story! In works such as these obstructions become abstract objects.