download catalogue high resolution pdf (22.3 mb) - Jens Haaning

073
VPD
P.010
here the corporate logotype becomes anonymous, only revealing its function
through its bareness. The use of Arabic typography also pointed to the generalized
lack of representation of the culture it is associated with–if only in a virtual fashion,
since the Mayor of the city ended up forbidding the hanging of the sign on the day
before its inauguration, declaring the project to be a provocation on the eve of the
municipal elections. In these two projects, as in Arabic Jokes–posters in the city
displaying jokes in Arabic opposite a photo of a blond pin-up, a generic image of
the "typical" — Danish girl — both the sender and the receivers of the messages
seemed again to be missing.
Although his pieces can sometimes be seen as disturbing, provocation is never an
end in itself in Jens Haaning’s actions. They resemble, for example, Joseph Beuys’
project to raise the Berlin wall by one centimeter for "aesthetic" (proportional)
— reasons — as a way to subvert it, to overcome it "with interior laughter", to displace
the viewers’ attention towards its conceptual dimension, beyond the physical wall.
Like the wall which was first internal, the objects Jens Haaning concentrates on in
his work are fundamentally conceptual: borders, nationalities, cultural differences…
so many conceptual constructions subverted by a similar form of laughter. Critics
have often neglected to point out one of the most obvious and immediate aspect of
Haaning’s practice, its humor, both in terms of form and content. Turkish Jokes,
Arabic Jokes… Joke rather than slogans, a very Spinozian kind of joy rather than
Adornian melancholia. "It’s important to me" Haaning once explained to Lars Bang
Larsen "that the work always shows that it is the product of the humor and imagination
of an individual, in order to avoid turning artistic practice into an essentially
analytical and administrative model, as in institutional critique’s systematic attacks
against galleries." Spinoza’s ethics are probably a more relevant reference here
than Adorno’s morality. Adorno’s aesthetic theories are responsible for bringing a
melancholy tone to art theory and criticism, excluding all type of humor and making
lamentation the only authorized mode of receiving art. Exactly opposite this
overestimation of sadness lies Spinoza’s ethics, based on joy and laughter.
According to him, joy is not directly bad, but good, and it is sadness which is "directly
bad". "Demonstration: joy. . .is a feeling which increases or facilitates the body’s
power to act. Sadness, on the contrary, is a feeling which diminishes or contradicts
the body’s power to act. Thus. . . joy is directly good, etc. QUED" . Laughter, like
joking, is defined by Spinoza as "pure joy", in opposition with mockery, which
Haaning never uses and which is an expression of resentment, thus intrinsically
bad. A joke like the one in Turkish Jokes–printed and displayed as a poster in the city
of Geneva (2002)–can be understood on different levels: in relation to the particular
status of immigrants in the field of representation, but also to another form of