Numen / For Use: Tape Z33

For the 10th anniversary of Z33, Croatian-Austrian design collective Numen / For Use have created a new iteration of their Tape installation: a sculptural structure suspended in between the trees, built entirely with transparent tape.

Croatian-Austrian design collective Numen / For Use have created a new iteration of their Tape installation at the Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, on the occasion of the institution's tenth anniversary. Continuing on the series that first originated at the Vienna Design Week in 2009, the collective has created a sculptural structure suspended between the trees, built entirely with transparent tape. The structure can be entered and experienced by visitors, and evokes the idea of a large-scale spiderweb.

"The idea for the installation originates in a set design concept for a dance performance in which the form evolves from the movement of the dancers between the pillars," states the Numen / For Use. "The dancers are stretching the tape while they move, so the resulting shape is a (tape) recording of the choreography." The structure's final for, was "found", according to the collective, through the act of wrapping in a chaotic, unplanned way, transforming a two-dimensional material into a three-dimensional shape. "The installation was envisaged as a site specific, parasitical structure invading an arbitrary location," Numen / For Use remark. "The straight lines of main trajectories are stretched across a given area and these tendons are then wrapped diagonally with layers of elastic tape, giving shape to a complex organic form through a process similar to the emergence of such structures in nature."

Numen / For Use, <i>Tape Z33</i>, Hasselt, Belgium, 2012 — Numen / For Use, *Tape Z33*, Hasselt, Belgium, 2012

The interior of the structure is supple and elastic, and morphs and adapts to those who enter it. "In the moment when the audience enters the installation," the collective states, "what started off as a sculpture seamlessly morphs into architecture. "

Since 2002, Z33 House for Contemporary Art has been organising projects and exhibitions that encourage visitors to see everyday things in a new way. The institution seeks to be a unique laboratory and a meeting place for experimentation and innovation. Z33 does not have a permanent collection of its own, but rather an ongoing programme of temporary exhibitions, where each year, it presents three large and three smaller exhibition projects. In addition to exhibitions, Z33 organises artistic projects in public spaces.