Official BB Leaf Project
2001
performances, video, actions, installations
Stellenbosch, South Africa
For Official BB Leaf Project BB enacts bureaucratic activities and actions from 09h00 to 17h00 in a laborious and undirected fashion, perhaps to highlight how one administers a life in order to be considered a good citizen with often random and ineffectual results.
During autumn BB sets herself up in a dry cleaner’s shopwindow for 3 months. The oak leaves are endlessly falling and the town is incessantly collecting and disposing of the leaves. (It must be noted that oak trees are not indigenious to South Africa). BB takes note and decides to collect ATM (automated teller machine) slips as the first Official BB Project custom, punching the slips into an identifiable oak leaf shape. The actions that follow brand and disseminate the Official BB Project custom around the town, although the bureaucratic administration thereof remains varied. These actions include: punching, tagging, dating, signing, stamping, blowing, and making notes.
For the final exhibition Official BB Project BB lures the participants of the exhibition into the administrative process of creating their own ATM leaf, personalising it in the manner of the Official BB Project custom. Once certified the leaf is sucked into a 2nd room with a branded leaf sucker, branded hanging buckets and branded office fans. The conclusion of the process is incidental and unrelenting because of random factors like the breeze gently moving the suspended buckets off course. If compliant (only one was) the ATM leaf might land up in a bucket and become a kite, otherwise the end too often is a pile of ATM leaves in the corner.
image credits Ulrich Wolff, Cameron Platter, Jean Brundit and BB