Hasta La Ideas

Artist Max Siedentopf has created a series of art works, called Home Alone – A Survival Guide, that depict challenges that can be taken on at home during coronavirus lockdown.

Namibian-German artist Siedentopf, who is based in London, created the series earlier this month after the UK government decided to restrict movement and encourage social distancing to limit the spread of the virus.

“Home Alone – A Survival Guide was created right at the start of the lockdown in the UK and was born out of the need to stay confined in self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Siedentopf told Dezeen.

“Everyone I spoke to had their video and photoshoots cancelled and was stuck at home with nothing to do and so I decided to turn my apartment upside down and capture the results: piling up cans as sculptures, tinkering with haute couture costumes, turning vacuum cleaners into robots, building traps, and inventing bizarre alternatives to toilet paper.”

Each artwork depicts a satirical response to one of a hundred self-isolation challenges that were created by Siedentopf, who caused outrage earlier this year with his photographs of models wearing household items as coronavirus masks.

The tasks include making an artwork from pasta, building a sculpture with sausages, creating a horror scene using ketchup and using your microwave as a PC.

“The handy survival guide consists of various chapters that ironically illuminate survival in self-chosen or prescribed isolation at home,” said Siedentopf.

Siedentopf shared each of the challenges on his Instagram and invited his followers to respond to the tasks.

“Most importantly I decided to publish all actions as a series of instructions on social media, each day around 5-10 different ones, and invited followers worldwide to reenact the respective mottos,” he explained.

“Over two weeks of confinement over 1,000 photos were made by people all around the world.”

The tasks became more intense as the series continued, with Siedentopf’s followers responding to the increasingly bizarre challenges.

“Each day I wanted to take the instructions a step further and see how far people would be willing to go and I think this really paid off,” said Siedentopf.

“People gave their dogs manicures, went fishing from their balcony and turned their vacuum cleaners into killer robots.”

Siedentopf hopes that the series will encourage people to be positive during the coronavirus pandemic.

“First and foremost I think it’s always important to keep a positive mindset, no matter how challenging the situation,” he explained.

“In many ways, you can use this challenging time as an advantage how you can find new and often more interesting ways to work that were not possible before,” he continued.

“I think being stuck at home doesn’t mean you need to be stuck, the series should show that there are literally endless possibilities how you can make interesting work and these instructions should help as a guide to kickstart this.”

The results of Home Alone – A Survival Guide have been turned into a book.

The project is the latest in a series of provocative artworks created by Siedentopf. He previously created a photo series showing people using everyday items as face masks and installed binoculars at Tate Modern to allow visitors to the museum to look into the neighbouring flats.

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