„A Perfect World“ is
a conceptual inquiry of holistic systems in relation to one‘s
role within that very structure. While researching the 1904 World’s
Fair in St. Louis, its overall theme of the „ideal citizen“
and the impact of technological utopias around the turn of the century,
Beate found a 1894 diagram by businessman and utopian technocrat
King C. Gillette, which outlines the human drift towards a better
future. Gillette’s idea of the world as a people‘s corporation
and his notion of progress depends on order, organization, intelligence
and discipline. Drawn on the wall of the gallery this image becomes
the starting point of the installation as it divides the exhibition
space in two parts: the „sea of competition for material wealth,“
an unruly, individualist struggle that leads the viewer through
a narrow channel of adversity to the „sea of progress,“
where science and the arts make up the key elements of the better
world.
Engl questions the humanistic utopia of this idealistic model of
evolution when it is combined with strategic intelligence. In „The
narrows“ – set amid the two exhibition spaces –
a loudspeaker plays a speech from the film „Network“
(1976). Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty as the head of the Union Broad
Casting System) intensely indoctrinates the newscaster Howard Beale
(Peter Finch) with his world system that is exclusively based on
currency: „The world is a business, Mr. Beale.“
During her residency at Boots Contemporary Art Space, Engl documented
a performance in a public space. The performers spelled out the
words „W-O-R-L-D“ and „O-R-D-E-R“ with grey
ponchos attached to each other. They make physically palpable the
gap a between connected individuals and the system of world order
they are illustrating. Photographs of the performance will be presented
in correlation to the installation, challenging the coherences of
their striking content and questioning which „sea“ drives
a more suitable „world order.“
At the very end of the exhibition space is a small box-like room
that functions as a „think tank.“ To enter the room,
the viewer simply penetrates one of the many ponchos. By popping
ones head through the neck hole, the audience dives into a surreal
white cube. The gallery’s ceiling intensified through wall
mirrors and the viewer experiences a bodiless installation „only
for heads.“ This final intellectual / spiritual retreat opens
up the strict order of the world system towards a collective meeting
room in which people come face to face or head to head and are forced
to interact. |