Global - Technology - Review

In celebration of the UAE’s 40th National Day, The Municipality of Abu Dhabi City has invited Artist Kurt Perschke’s world renowned RedBall Project to join events taking place throughout the Emirate between November 13 and December 2, 2011. A mobile sculptural intervention and world-class public art installation, RedBall Project is the first piece of its kind to ever be seen in Abu Dhabi—an ideal ambassador for contemporary art, and RedBall’s most exotic destination to date.

The National Day Celebration Committee (NDCC) was formed April 14th 2011 through the Executive Committee of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, chaired by HH Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority. Its aim is to co-ordinate all the planned activities which to mark the UAE’s 40th National day celebration taking place from 13 November 2011 through 2 December 2011.

Kurt Perschke is an artist who works in sculpture, video, collage and public space. His most acclaimed work, RedBall Project, is a traveling public art project that has taken place in Barcelona, St. Louis, Portland, Sydney, Arizona, Chicago and Toronto, and received a National Award from Americans for the Arts Public Art Network. RedBall has been avidly followed by the media, appearing in over one hundred media outlets including magazines, television, newspaper and radio. In 2006, he presented the project in the Busan Biennale. In addition to RedBall, Perschke has completed commissions for several institutions including The Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, the Vienna Technical Museum, and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. His video work has been screened in Europe and the US, and at the Bronx Museum during his time as an AIM Fellow. Perschke continues to develop new projects, and is currently working on an multi-city tour of a social sport broadcasting event, called Arena Pod. Born in Chicago, Kurt Perschke has also lived in the Virgin Islands, St. Louis, Vienna, and Cairo, Egypt. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Through the RedBall Project I utilize my opportunity as an artist to be a catalyst for new encounters within the everyday. Through the magnetic, playful, and charismatic nature of the RedBall the work is able to access the imagination embedded in all of us. On the surface, the experience seems to be about the ball itself as an object, but the true power of the project is what it can create for those who experience it. It opens a doorway to imagine what if? As RedBall travels around the world people approach me on the street with excited suggestions about where to put it in their city. In that moment the person is not a spectator but a participant in the act of imagination. I have witnessed it across continents, diverse age spans, cultures, and languages, always issuing an invitation. That invitation to engage, to collectively imagine, is the true essence of the RedBall Project. The larger arc of the project is how each city responds to that invitation and, over time, what the developing story reveals about our individual and cultural imagination.
- Kurt Perschke