Schöppinger Schläger

In 2021, Albert Coers came across a box of old table tennis bats, during a scholarship stay in the artists' village of Schöppingen, and was thrilled by the find - just beyond its use as sports equipment: the bats bear the traces of decades of use, tell stories, just like the stone slabs on the floor of the former farm. Slabs and rackets come together in an installation. The functional objects become something different, take on a painterly quality. Photos of the rackets become an artist's book, with front and back, red and black facing each other.

But there is more to the subjects: parallels can be drawn between the sport and artistic practice, the reaction to something given, the playing back of a ball ("ping-pong"). Taking this mode as a starting point, Coers involved fellow scholarship holders, inviting them to contribute autobiographical, fictional, or poetical texts on the theme of "table tennis/bat." Thus, very different languages, situations, and social experiences come together.

The texts are inserted into the photo series in the middle of the book as a separate component, on different paper and in a narrower format. The juxtaposition of original text and translation on a double-page spread also suggests a back-and-forth play. In an essay, Coers reflects on the connection between table tennis and art.

With contributions by Rudi Beutinger, Albert Coers, Sandra Rosas, Crauss, Ksenya Kumm, Carsten Lisecki, Cornelia Hülmbauer, Asja Schubert.