Performance and objects. Duration 25 min.
Performed by Ernesto Piga Carbone, Hamun Maghsodlo, Marie-Lydie Nokouda, Mireia Serra Voltas and  Anders Juhl Nielsen (trumpet) at the opening of the solo show (→ Works →) THIS MOMENT is the BEGINNING at Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark. 
Objects from the performance—dirty and wet folded white flags—were placed on the floor. These elements remained in place throughout the exhibition period.

Four huge white flags are lying on the floor in the most monumental room of the museum, under the watchful eyes of some of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s largest sculptures.
Four people enter the room. All are wearing white summer clothes and carrying scrubbing brushes and buckets of water. Each begins to wash the floor with the flags. Later on they engage in folding the flags ceremonially while the trumpet flour fills the room. Finally they shake hands with the audience.
The seance with the handshakes is a nod to Thorvaldsen himself. Once, when the famous sculptor travelled from Rome to Copenhagen in 1842, he missed his ferry connection and, somewhat vexed, had to travel by stagecoach all the way up through Europe. Along the way, he was cheered as befits an international star; one city government after another wanted to celebrate him. He just wanted to get home as fast as possible. However, he did accept one dinner invitation from some friends in Altona. 
Thorvaldsen’s leave-taking on this occasion made indelible impressions on both his travelling companion, Frederikke Wallick, and his hostess, Johanna Steinhem: he bade them farewell by shaking the hand of each and every one – even women, children, and servants. For a man of Thorvaldsen’s standing to do such a thing was entirely unheard of. People were dumbfounded and stared at their hands, wrote Wallick and Salomon. 
Echoes of the handshake seance revisit us today. During the summer of 2018, the Danish Government, the Social Democratic Party and the Danish People’s Party agreed that a handshake with elected officials should be a mandatory requirement to gaining Danish citizenship.

Photo and film: I DO ART Agency.