“Throne, watchtower, pulpit, pot, cocoon, module, spaceship, mutating virus, living organism, arthropod, liberté, égalité, fraternité, peace, pis, everything your heart desires, urinal, vomatorium, ejaculatorium, excrementorium, toilet of toilets, compost to the people.”
When one visits AVL’s Excrementus Megalomanus, one leaves behind the turbulence of the festival by towering above it. Becoming part of the recycling process, while exhibiting yourself.
Human waste systems and toilets have always been part of Atelier Van Lieshout’s work. They are functional sculptures on the border between art, design and architecture, one of the boundaries that AVL often plays with and rebels against. A compost toilet is a very simple way to efficiently recycle every human excretion imaginable and it made its first appearance in the oeuvre of AVL in 2001 during AVL-Ville, the anarchist and self-sufficient free state in the port of Rotterdam.