Author Description

The Games are Open by the Berlin-based artist team of Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser used materials recycled from the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Athletes' Village to create a sculpture in the form of a larger-than-life bulldozer. Constructed from 1,000 sheets of wheatboard, the artwork gradually transitioned from sculpture to garden, it's decomposition providing fodder for new growth. The Games are Open publication is designed as a hand-held flipbook, which animates the project's transformation over a four-year period. The book features over 172 images taken by Vancouver-based photographer Hans Sipma, who passed by the sculpture each day on his bicycle commute to work. Interspersed on facing pages, curator Barbara Cole traces the project's remarkable series of co-options, interventions and adoptions through an annotated chronology. Back pages feature a text by Barbara Holub, a Vienna-based artist, educator and writer whose transdisciplinary practice moves between art, urbanism, architecture and theory. Photographs by Hans Sipma and Barbara Cole.