joaoflux / digital / analog / culture

“Midnight Canteen” by Heman Chong and Max Schumacher sucked, as a conceptual art performance even more than as a party.

For maximal attention “Midnight Canteen” was scheduled for the weekend of the opening of the Berlin Biennial. Unfortunately the canteen on the 10th floor of Rathaus Kreuzberg is rather small and the organizers had their hands on mighty mailing lists.

While the original tables had been replaced with puristic tables and benches that you would expect in a dutch museum the canteen routine had not been changed. Everybody had to stand in line for drinks and a snack that was labeled “food art”. The line was long. Party organizers who don’t get funded by “Hauptstadt Kultur Fonds” would have anticipated that this kind of a set up would make people consume less.

After getting a drink and a plate of “food art”, it was important to get a table in order to actually eat the “food art”. We had a table with five people. I was one of the two who were sent for food and drinks. When we got back, Adrienne Göhler, curator of “Hauptstadt Kultur Fonds”, was sitting on our table. She had put her coat on the bench and refused to make room for us.

Heman Chong was all over the place taking photos and the band was called “Art Critics Orchestra”. There were “Menus” containing texts by Chong and Schumacher. Schumacher inevitably mentions that he ate at “Windows of the World” one time (he didn’t have wine). The Menus also contained drawings of the tables that were probably supposed to look more canteenesque than the original canteen tables that had been removed and a list of the “Midnight Canteen Crew”, including a “public relations officer” and someone who was responsible for “Raumtaktik”. The Raumtaktik guy had clearly failed, unless his aim was to make everybody feel stressed and annoyed. The “public relations officer” had succeeded in getting the place so crowded, that even if the Raumtaktiker hadn’t been such a loser, the party would have sucked.

As conceptual art the whole event was also a failure. Parties in strange locations and environments are quite usual and there is a long tradition, especially in Berlin. Having a band called “Art Critics Orchestra” playing neo-punk underlines what a pretentious enterprise the whole thing was.

Unfortunately conceptual art is a very attractive field for mediocre artists like Schumacher and Chong, whose greatest talent and greatest desire seem to be getting attention. Getting attention is fine as long as it is a little bit inspiring or at least entertaining as a side product.

I did not stay until the end of the night.

Technorati Tags: art, Berlin, Berlin Biennial, conceptual art, urban

On my last visit to Malmö, Sweden, I saw a note on a counter in a shop, that read

“due to our common history we would like to show solidarity:
1 DKK + 1 SEK“

The actual exchange rate today (2006/03/07) is about 1 DKK for 1.26 SK. It used to be the other way around until the early 90s (1). At the time not only drinking alcohol was very expensive for foreigners in Sweden (including the Danish). Now the picture has changed and it has become very affordable for Danish citizens to even live in Malmö. Since the Öresund bridge that connects Denmark with the scandinavian mainland has opened, it takes less than half an hour to get from the center of Malmö to the center of Copenhagen. This is about the same as getting from Prenzlauer Berg to Schöneberg in Berlin.

Unlike Berlin, the Copenhagen / Malmö region is booming and more and more people live on one side of Öresund and work on the other. Nevertheless Denmark and Sweden seem to have a difficult relationship. It almost reminds a bit of the relationship between the Netherlands and Germany, even though the last war between the two countries dates back much longer and without being a historian I assume that it wasn’t as ugly.

A couple of weeks ago I read that the Swedish prime minister openly criticized the Danish prime minister about the way he acted in the caricature quarrel. The Danish prime minister answered that being criticized by a Swedish social democrat only showed that he was right.

Considering how unusual this kind of open critic and verbal provocation is between representatives of different countries one wonders what is going on. My opinion is that the two countries almost feel like they are a family. Many people in Malmö watch Danish TV and follow Danish Politics and it’s probably the same the other way around.

In a newly built neighborhood in the former harbor area a skyscraper with expensive apartments opened just about a year ago. It seems like it was especially built so the Danish citizens who want to escape Copenhagen and live in Malmö instead can see Denmark from their living room. Just like the Swedish Doctor in Lars von Trier’s TV Series “The Kingdom”, who went on the roof of the hospital in Copenhagen so he could see Sweden.

(1) My friend Martin claims that the Swedish Crown went down when George Soros speculated against it and has never recovered since.

Technorati Tags:scandinavia, economics, Sweden, Denmark, politics