The attempt to make a 4000 piece puzzle depicting the classic painting Children’s Games (1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, forms the focal point of a work that explores how, and if, the repetitive and playful pastime activity of jigsaw puzzles might serve as a productive terrain for the construction of a community, where knowledge sharing can take shape through conversation. Filmed from a bird’s-eye view, over the course of a week, it records the artists in the company of several groups of invited artists, art workers, thinkers and their children, gathered around the slow creation of the jigsaw puzzle. Bruegel’s painting is overwhelming in terms of detail and completely unique in its choice of playful children as the central motif. Albeit never completed in Children’s Games (Puzzled), the image becomes a springboard for discussions and musings among the many voices, hands and heads taking part; from conversations about play and knowledge, the city, and the role of art in society, to the role of children in urban space and the potentiality of art processes that fail. Through an open-ended and self-reflective approach to collaborative investigation and ‘learning by doing’, questions of what might be termed participation, creation and knowledge production within the context of contemporary art are raised.
Children’s Games (Puzzled) was realised by FACTORY WORKERS UNITE (Tina Helen and Søren Thilo Funder) with Michala Paludan, Vito, Rolf Nowotny, Uma, Frans Jacobi, Line Ellegaard, Karl August, Henrik Chulu, Katrine Malinovsky, Kristoffer Ørum, Otto, Jakob Jakobsen, Thilo, Johanne Løgstrup, Fargo, Sylvester Roepstorff, Uma, James Day, Ingimar, Åse Eg, Pia Rönicke, Anu Ramdas, Kasper Opstrup, Johanne Østervang, Malik, Solvind, Misja Thirslund Krenchel, Vester og Rasmus Brink Pedersen
