Elmgreen & Dragset
16 Sep - 26 Nov 2005
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset
The Welfare Show, Kunsthalle Bergen, Norwegen, Mai 2005, Foto: Kunsthalle Bergen
The Welfare Show, Kunsthalle Bergen, Norwegen, Mai 2005, Foto: Kunsthalle Bergen
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset
The Welfare Show
16 September - 26 November 2005
The Welfare Show is a traveling exhibition and an ongoing catalog project by Elmgreen & Dragset. It started at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway in May 2005 and ends at the Power Plant, Toronto in March 2006. It will be presented in the Vienna BAWAG FOUNDATION from 16 September to 26 November 2005. The Welfare Show is not a regular traveling show since it takes different shapes from venue to venue according to the character of the institutional site and its local context.
The Welfare Show is a personal and perverted take on topics related to the current unison reform mode and neo-liberal discourses which can be found throughout a great part of contemporary Western democracies.
For the BAWAG FOUNDATION, Elmgreen & Dragset have created a site-specific installation that diffuses the borders of inside vs outside, marginal vs central, access vs denial. The actual exhibition space is sealed off, but the audience can climb the stairs to what is normally the director’s office, and through binoculars they can witness a performer re-enact a social situation that most of us are only used to be confronted with in mass-mediated imagery. This scene is juxtaposed by real life elements from the actual surroundings – namely the high-end shopping area Tuchlauben – which, similar to the staged situation of poverty, can be observed up close through binoculars located in the foyer area. Targeted interventions in the BAWAG FOUNDATION spaces relate aesthetic and social productions of art to the social surroundings and make them compete with them.
Altogether, the installation is reminiscent of a laboratory behavioral experiment, where the spectator for a moment takes the role of the researcher and can make his or her own diagnosis of the situation. Or are we just trapped in an obscure amusement park setup in which we become voyeurs of the social grotesque?
Christine Kintisch
The Welfare Show
16 September - 26 November 2005
The Welfare Show is a traveling exhibition and an ongoing catalog project by Elmgreen & Dragset. It started at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway in May 2005 and ends at the Power Plant, Toronto in March 2006. It will be presented in the Vienna BAWAG FOUNDATION from 16 September to 26 November 2005. The Welfare Show is not a regular traveling show since it takes different shapes from venue to venue according to the character of the institutional site and its local context.
The Welfare Show is a personal and perverted take on topics related to the current unison reform mode and neo-liberal discourses which can be found throughout a great part of contemporary Western democracies.
For the BAWAG FOUNDATION, Elmgreen & Dragset have created a site-specific installation that diffuses the borders of inside vs outside, marginal vs central, access vs denial. The actual exhibition space is sealed off, but the audience can climb the stairs to what is normally the director’s office, and through binoculars they can witness a performer re-enact a social situation that most of us are only used to be confronted with in mass-mediated imagery. This scene is juxtaposed by real life elements from the actual surroundings – namely the high-end shopping area Tuchlauben – which, similar to the staged situation of poverty, can be observed up close through binoculars located in the foyer area. Targeted interventions in the BAWAG FOUNDATION spaces relate aesthetic and social productions of art to the social surroundings and make them compete with them.
Altogether, the installation is reminiscent of a laboratory behavioral experiment, where the spectator for a moment takes the role of the researcher and can make his or her own diagnosis of the situation. Or are we just trapped in an obscure amusement park setup in which we become voyeurs of the social grotesque?
Christine Kintisch