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Fabian Hesse: Kartoffel und Dromedar

Vernissage on Thursday, March 12th, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.


"The windmills of reality fight back"

(Terry Gilliam about his failed film “Don Quijote”)

Along the line between Wirklichkeit and reality abysms are held. Parts of our society are staggering towards the edge or are already in a state of free fall, others are being carried away.

Who takes part in "36 Stunden sind ein Tag/36 hours is one day", a workshop organized by Fabian Hesse and the expert members of PPconsulting? “Practicing survival techniques, getting to know the infrastructure of homeless, experimental time management, exploring urban micro-environments for sleeping outdoors” – people actually doing it, may bridge a gap or hit the ground. Via mobile, informal architecture, social ties, segmented public spheres, and precarious/potent situations, Hesse builds a survival kit supplied with artistic means. Contrary to the poor repertoire of the capital, it’s through artistic work and strategies that he takes up the fighting against windmills. “In all societies there are utopias that reside in a place to be found on a map and within a specific time that can be defined and measured by every day calendar systems.” (Foucault)

Fabian Hesse finds these places and time slots using them as artistic set of content for works and projects like ?13164 - Windmills for Doordrecht“ or in his extallations "slumparade", "Fidschi Dreieck", in "ppconsulting" and "Brügge for free". In this work he carries out minimal changes in the urban area using materials that are free and available for abandoning them again. Hesse concentrates and positions the documentation of what happened within an installation that follows the same parameters.

By involving artistic and urbanistic tools, these places and time slots are or not formulated in ways that they intend to make real social utopias through art. Yet, they do propose a specific situation, which would never have won this form without thinking utopia. When cooperating with scientists, homeless, actors etc., Fabian Hesse creates a mediatic field, in which the participants “find a place” of their own, at the same time he drives the art public to reconsider and to specify its conventions and relationships.

(The author Georg Winter is artist and deals with urban and emotional situations in direct relation with action research. Currently he holds a lectureship in the HBKS Saarbrücken. / Translation by Jenny Thaler)