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izzy-b-hands · 4 years

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Dancer Chapter One

This is set in a Post-Golden Circle AU wherein nobody in Kingsman died (aka we still have Merlin, Roxy and JB, but we also got to meet the Statesman folks through...we’ll save that for when I eventually do my rewrite of Golden Circle lol.)

For now, the point is everyone is alive, and Eggsy has a very important mission he must undertake.

In booty shorts.

For the greater good (and because why couldn’t Rocketman and Kingsman share wardrobes you know. Why not. There is not reason why not is the answer.)

Warning, we get NSFW in this. A lot. Just. Be ready for that. Violence because spies, sex because of lots of things (emotions and other things, you’ll see when you read.) If that ain’t your cup of tea, maybe skip this one.

And yes, I did title it after the Queen song.

Shout out and my thanks to @bearkare for helping me figure out how to chop this up into chapters properly; I owe you one big time!!!

My love to all who read/like/reblog!

“These are...necessary?” Eggsy asked, and snapped the waistband of the golden shiny booty shorts.

“Absolutely,” Harry replied, and handed over another stack of similarly shiny clothing. “These should get you through the rest of the mission without needing any laundry done.”

“Are they all...”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Harry smiled. “Besides, these missions can be...fun. I quite enjoyed one I did, in the seventies, in a club where you could-”

“Oh, you could tell me about that later,” Eggsy interrupted, shoving the stack of multicolored booty shorts into his bag. “A reward for finishing the mission.”

“It was a swingers club, is what it was.”

“Aaah, you said it anyway,” Eggsy sighed. “And the tops are all-”

“Mesh,” Harry finished. “But there are also sweatshirts, in case you get cold.”

“Booty shorts and mesh shirts in December, how could I possibly get cold,” Eggsy murmured. “Sweatpants?”

“One pair that I could find, so be careful,” Harry answered, and handed over a pair of Juicy Couture sweats that read ‘Bitch’ in sparkling fake jewels on the back.

“...you found these?”

“I did.”

“So who previously used these here at Kingsman? Just...wondering. Or was that you, at the club? I presume you still go, since you’re keen to talk about it-”

Harry cut him off with the toss of a pair of heels.

“Male strippers don’t have to wear these, I thought?”

“Some do, some don’t,” Harry shrugged. “Most anyone can wear most anything. Give them a try. We’ve got platforms as well, if you’d prefer.”

“I would, I think. Might break an ankle either way,” Eggsy sighed, and handed back the heels in exchange for a pair of golden, shimmering, chunky platforms. “Shoes for after work?”

An extra pair of Adidas were the last thing he tossed into his bag for the mission, before taking a final look at himself in the mirror.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Why not? You look fantastic, and the club we need you to infiltrate doesn’t even require you to strip every night. Hell, intel has revealed that some of the men that work there don’t even strip, they just work the floor and go about sitting in laps and whatnot. You could stick to that, whatever, so long as you find it.”

Harry’s confident words echoed as he stepped out and headed down the street to the waiting Kingsman cab. ‘It’ was a chemical formula, that the biochemical weapons dealing club owner was threatening to use to create what he called ‘the ultimate weapon.’ Whether that was really true they’d find out after, when they could see the formula and what it actually contained.

But that all came down to him.

The club was a four hour flight away, in Ibiza. Even on the Kingsman private plane, he was restless, plucking at the elastic edges of the shorts, pacing in the platforms to try and practice balancing in them.

“Where’s all this coming from?” Merlin asked from the pilot’s seat. “All I can hear is those damned shoes; on a regular plane, you know I’d have to make you sit down, right?”

“It’s nothing,” Eggsy muttered, even though it was indeed something. Tilde was less than pleased he’d been called in for a mission, and unhappier still that involved him working in a strip club. Never mind that they’d spent weeks arguing over how he could continue to complete his princely duties while staying out of the limelight and skipping public events. She wanted him to be able to show his face and be at her side, but couldn’t understand what it would mean.

Giving up Kingsman. Giving up the thing that had helped him become the man she loved.

Or that she might still love. Maybe. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

But he’d asked Roxy to stay with Tilde, so he could provide them both with mission updates (edited as needed to protect Tilde from the club owner and anyone he might send out should their communiques somehow be discovered) and he hoped she would see that as a sign of his love and care.

“I don’t believe that,” Merlin sighed. “But we’re nearly there. Have you got everything?”

‘Everything’ consisted of not just his bag of clothing, but one bag of regular make-up, eco-friendly glitter, pasties that he did not understand the point of his having, and another bag full of...’make-up.’

Eyeliner that could be used to essentially draw a fuse on a surface and lit on fire, perfume that was in a super-pressurized nozzle and contained a flesh eating toxin that acted as soon as it hit skin, eye shadows that if brushed on a finger and then dipped in a drink could knock out a bull elephant in a minute (what it would do to a human...well. Better not to think about that, and to use it only if absolutely necessary.)

That, plus the regular Kingsman kit, of course, carefully hidden in among all three bags, very carefully in the case of the pistols and ammunition.

All of it banged against his legs as he did his best to look...however he figured he was meant to look. Confident, and not like he was worried about whether or not this was a mission he could pull off, and not like he was worried he might come home to Tilde too upset to be consoled or worse.

“You!” the man that called out to him from the club’s doorway was a fierce-looking person, literally. A tiger with open mouth was tattooed on the front his neck, down onto his chest, with blood dripping from the fangs. “You’re fucking late! You know, in my day, when they sent a new boy, they sent him on time! No fucking respect for the show anymore, none at all.”

“I’m sorry, my flight ran late,” Eggsy tried. “But if you let me set my things down, I can get started right away, get out on the floor, serve some drinks, you know.”

The man scoffed, and pulled him into the doorway, nearly knocking him off his platforms. “Serve some drinks, pah. You’re tonight’s main entertainment. How else is the boss supposed to know if you’re worth the investment money? After all, your agency doesn’t get paid until we see how you work.”

He led Eggsy by the arm down a dark hall, and shoved open a door which led to a small green room. “And you should know...not many of you work out.”

“Then I’d be headed home, I suppose,” Eggsy replied as he stepped into the room, taking in the cracking paint on the walls, the cushions with stuffing coming out of them on the couch, and the filthy mirror on the make-up table.

The man laughed. “Home? Is that what they told you? I thought they weren’t going to lie anymore...ah well. Not my monkey, not my circus, as they say. Sure. You would be sent home, let’s say that. Just hurry the fuck up, get into something good, and when I knock, you take a left, then another left, and come out on stage. We’ll be waiting.”

Eggsy dropped his bags carefully by the couch, and as soon as the door was closed rifled through the clothing one to find the earpiece hidden in it.

“Merlin!”

“Eggsy! Safe and sound then, good to know. Now, I’ll be laying low around town, got myself a little set-up so I can assist you if needed and-”

“You can assist me by telling me why the fuck none of you warned me they’d want me to strip the first night. I literally just got here, and they want me on stage, now!” Eggsy spat.

“Okay, alright. Keep calm,” Merlin soothed. “This isn’t like you anyway; are you sure you’re alright?”

Eggsy sighed, and contemplated spilling his heart to Merlin now. But he couldn’t, not really. For his own sake, and for the sake of the mission.

“Just...I’m sorry. They made it fairly clear they kill any performer who doesn’t make the cut, so I’m a bit tense, is all.”

“...sure,” Merlin replied, and Eggsy could hear the disbelief in his voice. “We can talk later, perhaps? Just in case there would be anything else you aren’t telling me. Not that there is! But...if there were.”

“I’d like that,” Eggsy said softly. “So, any suggestions on...”

“The stripping? Oh Jesus, no. Could you imagine, me? Be like watching an Ent strip,” Merlin chuckled. “You’ve got this, you’ve done your research, I know you asked us not to watch you practice, but I do know you spent a good few hours in the studio space we rented for you. Just do what you’ve researched, put your heart into it, and you’ll be fine for the night, at least. From there...we’ll figure it out, alright?”

“Okay,” Eggsy muttered, and hid the earpiece back in its spot. From the bag he pulled a purple glittery mesh tank top, and a black thong that, as far as he could tell, was held together purely with wishes and will for as little material it was made of. Over that went a pair of black velvet booty shorts, and the top-

“Oh good, I caught you before you were all done,” a younger blonde man, his make-up bright gold and glittery with eyeliner winged sharp, in a black feathered mesh robe strode in. “Your agency said they weren’t sending your whole wardrobe, so here-”

He yanked open an apparently half-broken closet door at the side of the room that Eggsy hadn’t even noticed, to reveal a sea of bright colors and patterns on all variety of clothes. “What you have on looks fine, but he’ll want you to take off more layers than that. I’d say, this, this, and ooh! I bet you look handsome in a suit, so this as well.”

The man tossed a black T-shirt, a pair of loose tear-away joggers, and a suit jacket and pants towards Eggsy.

Eggsy stared. “Thanks. Do you-”

“Oh!” the young man laughed. “Not anymore. No, I oversee. Like a manager, but better, because I don’t have to fuck the boss anymore to keep my pole and my space in the club. Well, at least I said I was done with doing that now.”

Eggsy realized he must have made a face, because the man laughed again.

“Oh darling, bless you. How else do you think you keep your spot? Any other club would make you pay to rent the pole, the stage, right? Well, here at El Tigre, we don’t make you do that. You get paid to be here, to do your work. But, in order to stay...”

The man shrugged. “Life is dirty, and difficult. It could be just as bad anywhere else, so make a garden out of the mulch you’ve got, I say. I’m Evan, by the way.”

“You aren’t from here, I take it?”

Evan smiled. “No. I don’t think anyone who dances here is actually from Ibiza. No, the ladies and gentlemen who come in like their...imports, if you will. Even if that means us white-bread boys raised up on fish and chips, you know? And the boss has his tastes as well, and that’s the final say on it, really.”

Eggsy nodded. “Thank you. For the clothes, and the information. I didn’t realize they’d want me to dance right away, I mean I just got off the plane and made my way over here, and-”

Evan interrupted him with a hug. “It’s intimidating, I know. And ignore Tony, he’s an ass, but he only hurts people if ordered to. He’s loyal like that.”

“That man with the tiger on his neck?” Eggsy tried and failed to bite back a giggle. “His name is...Tony.”

Evan giggled right back. “He hates it, but yeah. We all call him Tony the tiger behind his back. Long as you don’t let him hear you say it, you’re safe. Now, you finish up. Oh, and match your shadow color to the color of your thong. Boss really goes for that.”

Evan was gone with a clack of his heels and a swish of his robe, and Eggsy wished he’d have stayed. Not even to gain more intel (though it was all good and needed), but just to not be alone in the moment.

But he managed it, and after choosing a new pair of platforms (shiny black vinyl with purple laces) he made it to the stage.

The club was empty, except for Evan, sitting on one side of the stage. Tony was on the other.

And at the end of the stage, dead center, was the man he needed to get close to, close enough to find and steal the chemical formula that might destroy thousands, millions, if sold to the wrong hands. The club owner, the “boss” as everyone apparently called him, Boniface Gagneux.

He wasn’t the stereotypical ‘club owner’ at least not in the way movies would show, to Eggsy’s memory. He was sharp-looking both in handsomeness and in the way a canine poked out just a bit from his top lip as he smiled at Eggsy, as though he’d bite if he got too close. His dark hair had just a touch of grey in it at the sides, and the dark suit he wore was beautifully tailored, sprinkled with sewn in tiny rhinestones on the shoulders, so he actually sparkled under the club lighting.

“Mr. Wyn Morris, we meet at last. I haven’t heard much about you, but-” Gagneux’s eyes traced him from top to bottom. “You look even better than your picture. Hopefully you dance as pretty as you look.”

Eggsy bit back a comment. That wasn’t what his character, Wyn, would say, not at all. Wyn was happy to be here, and happy to please, even if Gagneux’s glances made him feel sick to his stomach.

He simply nodded, and the music started.

The song he didn’t know, but it was something that seemed it would have fit only in setting like this, something about ‘being wanted at seventeen.’ The beat wasn’t too fast, nor too slow, but it took him a minute to find it nonetheless, to roll his hips the way he’d seen in every video lesson he could find online.

Even with practice, he still felt horribly out of it, and was sure he had to look ridiculous, as he tried to vamp it up, stripping off the suit jacket and tossing it to Evan, who blessedly gave him a smile.

Gagneux’s face was an imperceptible mask now, watching him with piercing blue eyes. Was he impressed, did he hate it, was he busy worrying if he’d accidentally left the stove on? There was no way to tell.

The suit pants were rip off just like the leggings beneath them, and those he tossed to Tony, who glared at him so sharply he almost looked for a stab wound.

Instead, he kept on, and bemoaned that they’d chosen such a long song. Actually spacing out when to rip everything else off was difficult with music he hadn’t used before (and Tilde, upset as she was, had refused to be a practice audience to help him get it right, though he’d begged her to do it, and had thought he might find it all funny.)

It felt too soon to shed the T-shirt as he strode on-beat further down the stage, but he did it anyway before dropping to his knees and rocking backwards on his haunches, hips gyrating the entire time. It fucking hurt, and he realized he should have used his time on the plane to stretch, not to worry.

He leaned forward, then crawled a bit further down, locking eyes with Gagneux. Still no change in expression though, not even when he ripped off the joggers and tossed them to a happily laughing Evan, who caught them and hugged them close. Evan was the hype man he desperately needed, and he made a mental note to thank him later for the help as he dropped again to his knees at the end of the stage.

Gagneux reached a hand forward, and plucked at the string of the thong, then raised an eyebrow at him.

There had been no mention of that, full frontal. But everything about the damn mission had been a surprise so far, why should this be any different?

He tossed his mesh tank top to Tony, then with a bit of effort, snapped the string of the thong, and handed it to Gagneux, who had leaned forward so close he could have pulled Eggsy off the stage.

He half thought that might be what would happen, but instead Gagneux just held the destroyed thong tight, and raised a hand to stop the music.

“Not bad. Go back, down the hall, and take a right.”

Eggsy nodded, and slowly stood. “I’ll be a just a moment, to grab some clothes.”

“No.” Gagneux said softly. “Come as you are.”

The DJ started up another song once he was off stage, and he could hear Evan chattering to Tony. He wished he could have another moment with him, to ask what to expect now. He had an idea, but hearing it from someone who’d actually been in the moment would have been better.

Instead, he did as he was told: down the hall, and to the right, into an office. It was elegant, all in black, a black marble desk and black velvet couch. The chair he when to sit on had a towel emblazoned with his fake name, also black, sitting on it. A blessing, he certainly wasn’t about to sit his bare ass on a chair that likely was meant for use by whoever came into Gagneux’s office day-to-day.

The song that was playing outside filtered in just before Gagneux walked in, then shut the door. The aggressive beat was just audible through it, but Eggsy had a sinking feeling not much else would be audible to anyone listening in on the office from the outside.

“Look at you,” Gagneux smirked, and ran a hand along Eggsy’s jawline. “Those thighs alone will earn you fans, but with the face? Forget it. You’ll have men and women coming in here begging for you.”

He sat behind the desk, and chuckled. “That means you’re in, if you weren’t sure.”

Eggsy laughed lightly. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. We set up a schedule now then, or?”

Gagneux smiled. “We’ll get to that. First, I need to know you won’t be swayed by any of those offers.”

“From patrons? No, of course not.”

“Good. Because, as Evan may have already mentioned, when you’re working for me, you’re mine. Is that understood? Dancing, and the club, and me-those are your three priorities,” Gagneux said, holding up a finger with each word.

“And myself?” Eggsy asked before he could stop himself.

But Gagneux just shook his head. “I look after you. Mutual caring: you look after the club and your work and our patrons, and I look after you.”

Eggsy could swear Gagneux had the DJ doing this on purpose, changing up the music to manipulate the moment, as a slower, but still bopping and more romantic song came on.

“Come here,” Gagneux stood and walked to the front of the desk, in front of Eggsy. “Stand up.”

He obeyed, and waited to shiver as Gagneux would presumably do something horrible, or god only knew what else and-

The kiss was soft. And sweet, and not at all what he was expecting. He didn’t mean to kiss back either, but it took him by such surprise, and it was just something else.

Gagneux pressed his forehead to Eggsy’s, a hand gently holding his chin. “I’m excited to work with you. Tomorrow, starting 22:00, we’ll have you just work the floor, to get used to the place when it’s full. I close completely the days I’m getting new talent in, so what you saw out there is far from the norm. Just lap dances and drinks on the floor. We’ll let you get your sea legs before putting you back onstage, though I don’t think that will take you long. Evan will walk you to your apartment; nobody leaves the club alone is one of my rules.”

He let go of Eggsy’s chin and moved away from him. “Have a good night, Wyn.”

Eggsy swallowed hard, and nodded. “You as well, Mr. Gagneux.”

“Boniface. No need for such formalities here,” Gagneux...or rather, Boniface, said, leaning back against the desk.

Eggsy nodded again, and picked up the towel before trotting back to the green room, his head spinning, and his heart beating entirely too fast for comfort.

#text post #LeeH writes #Kingsman fic

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Socle du Monde Biennale 2017 – To challenge the Earth, the Moon, the Sun & the Stars

Previously: Breeding a Planetary Community Chicken and Socle du Monde Biennale – The geometries.

Wim Delvoye, Slobodan, 2004. Photo courtesy of the artist

Exhibition view. Photo: Jens Wolter

Piero Manzoni, Socle du Monde, 1961. Photo: Ole Bagger. Courtesy of HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art

Socle Du Monde – To challenge the Earth, the Moon, the Sun & the Stars, the biennale that opened a few weeks ago in Herning (Denmark), celebrates artists who have taken up “the challenge of turning the world upside down”. The event is named after a famous work by Piero Manzoni, the upside-down plinth that invites viewers to look at their surrounding from a new perspective and see the world as the ultimate artwork. Some of the pieces exhibited in the biennale are by Piero Manzoni and fellow artists who were part of ZERO, a movement in the 1950s and 1960s that looked for a ‘fresh start’ in art by eschewing color, emotion and individual expression. Visually, it might be a bit beige and tedious but a closer look reveals ingenious experiments with light, forms, space, materials and time.

Most of the biennale, however, is inhabited by contemporary robots, musical insects, animals, tattoos, African masks and tree trunks wrapped up in fabric. Just like what happened (to me) with the ZERO works, it’s tempting to stop at the first visual impression and skip from one artwork to another. However, it pays to read the description of each work and understand the ideas and beliefs behind each installation. That’s how you realize that even the most garish fairground signs have the power to make you ponder upon civic values. Or that a few farm animals can teach you a lesson about our relationship to non-human creatures. That’s also how you’re going to spend almost 6 hours visiting the biennale, instead of the 2 hours suggested by the event online guide. I spend a full day and a half there and still had the feeling i needed to come back.

The city of Herning is probably not an obvious Summer destination but if ever you find yourself in the area, do check out the biennale, it is one of the most consistently surprising, intelligent and visually compelling art events i’ve seen this year. Here’s a short and very subjective list of some of the works you can discover at Socle du Monde:

Tomás Saraceno, The Aerocene Explorer. Photo: Jens Wolter

Tomás Saraceno, The Aerocene Explorer. Image HEART museum

Tomás Saraceno is embracing “the Earth, the Moon, the Sun & the Stars” rather than challenging them. The artist has spent the past few years designing for the Aerocene era, a speculative CO2-free future in which humans will live in floating habitats, clustering together and peacefully defining new forms of social structures and citizenship.

The artist created a beta version of the Aerocene Explorer backpacks to help us reclaim collective ownership of the atmosphere. The floating sculpture doubles as kit for solar-powered atmospheric exploration. It is open source and you can DIY yours should you wish to explore the skies too.

Cameron Robbins, Wind Drawing Machine, 1990-2016

Cameron Robbins‘s Wind Drawing Machine also harnesses weather energy. Only it translates it into abstract ink drawings. Wind speed and direction orients a swiveling drawing board connected to a wind vane, while the wind speed drives a pen on a wire arm around in a cyclical motion.

For many years Robbins has been crafting elegant drawings machines that are guided by the wind. Some of these machines draw with light. Others participate to sonic performances.

“I had found a way of working with the world,” he explained in an interview, “that reflected my observations and was my own thing. For me it also offered a nice sidestep over vexing issues like self-consciousness in art making.”

Cleaning up Wim Delvoye’s Super Cloaca

Wim Delvoye, Cloaca Faeces. Photo: Jens Wolter

One of the chapters of the biennale is tastefully titled Wim Delvoye: Shit on Piero Manzoni. It’s a little horror show orchestrated by the famous provocateur: anus prints, a video that zooms in on blackhead extraction, and a shit machine complete with its smelly production. Wim Delvoye has made several versions of Cloaca. There’s one you can squeeze in a suitcase, another that is hanging on the ceiling of a museum in Tasmania, another looks like a washing machine, etc. The one on show at the HEART museum is Super Cloaca, a huge technological simulation of the human digestion. On one side, you feed the machine and a few hours later a long sausage made of faeces is extruded. I arrived at the museum at the worst possible moment: the shit had been delivered a couple of night earlier and the staff was cleaning up the machine. The smell was awful.

The artist’s declared objective was to build an expensive, sophisticated apparatus that would have no other purpose than producing shit. Yet, the work does invite numerous questions about the value of artistic efforts, taste-based judgments, human hierarchies and even the mechanisms that support the art market. You can’t buy any of these machines but you can buy what they expel. Delvoye’s team will vacuum-pack it and seal it in a small jar of resin for you.

Wim Delvoye, Tattooed Pigs

Delvoye also brought some of the tattoed pigs from his controversial Art Farm. Their taxidermied bodies are covered in hearts, leggy ladies, wings, skulls, Disney characters, Louis Vuitton monograms and religious symbols.

As an insightful article in the brooklyn rail notes: The images in this case fleetingly bolstered the physical worth of the animals while concurrently exposing the contradictions in our value system. For example, the tattooing required a special veterinary anesthesiologist because while we have procedures developed for the sedation of dogs, cats, and giraffes, pigs are not worth enough to fix if something goes wrong. But imbued with the aura of their artist decorator, the skins in which the pigs lived conferred upon them an elusive fetishized value. This value did not extend to the flesh, as the animals were skinned and their meat sold at market price.

Wim Delvoye, Tim, 2006-2008

Wim Delvoye, Tim, 2006-2008. Photo courtesy of the artist

Piero Manzoni, Living Sculpture. Photo: Ole Bagger

And finally, there was Tim! Tim is “a living sculpture”. Delvoye tattooed his back and has since sold it to a German art collector. When Tim dies, his skin will be framed. In the meantime, he’s paid to sit, with a straight back and legs dangling off on a plinth. Fortunately for him, he is allowed to keep his headphones on…

Tim echoes Manzoni’s ‘living sculptures’, models whom the young artist signed with ink that could be washed off, making them temporary artworks.

Nathan Coley, The Same for Everyone (detail), 2017. Photo: Jens Wolter

Nathan Coley, The Same for Everyone, 2017. Photo: Jens Wolter

Artist Nathan Coley was traveling through Central Jutland, when he saw an old sign reading ‘Same for all’. Hence his collection of signs, THE SAME FOR EVERYONE, which have been erected ten locations around Jutland. One of them is just outside one of the locations of the biennale.

I love that work. Because of the old school bulbs and scaffolding aesthetics. But also because of the text. First, you think you get the meaning immediately. But the more you think about it, the more complex its possible meaning seems to get. Or maybe i like to complicate things?

Conrad Shawcross, The ADA Project. Photo: Ole Jørgensen

Conrad Shawcross’s The ADA Project is an industrial robot, its choreographed movements inspired the composition of musical scores written by composers. The performances look quite different from what the official images of the work suggest. The machine moves far too slowly for its arms to draw those stunning patterns of light. If you’re used to media art festivals, you’re not going to be very impressed. However, i think that the value of The ADA Project lies in the development process of the work. The artist commissioned female musicians to spend a week with the robot and write a piece of music inspired by its movements. “I’m trying a new way of commissioning with new constraints,” Shawcross told The Guardian. “The key tenet was that instead of the machine being subservient to the music, the machine was the primary inspiration.

The title of the work is an homage to mathematician Ada Lovelace, who played a key role in the development of computer programming.

Charles Fréger, Wilder Mann (Tschäggättä, Switzerland), 2010-2011

Charles Fréger, Wilder Mann (Krampus, Germany), 2010-2011

Charles Fréger, Wilder Mann, 2010-2011. Exhibition view. Photo: Jens Wolter

Charles Fréger, Wilder Mann (Sos Colongànos, Sardinia), 2010-2011

Charles Fréger (Pelzmärtle, Bad Herrenalb, Germany), Wilder Mann, 2010-2011

Charles Fréger, Wilder Mann (Caretos, Lazarim, Portugal), 2010-2011

One of the chapters of the biennale, The Eye in the Mask, brings side by side ethnographic masks with works of art by the CoBrA avant-garde and by contemporary artists. Putting a mask on alters your identity. You can become an animal, a monster, a deity or another, more powerful, more secretive being.

A whole room was filled with the engrossing photo series that Charles Fréger realized throughout Europe in search of the mythological figure of the Wild Man.

Asger Jorn, Smile Cold Street, 1962

Asger Jorn, Big Kiss for the American Cardinal, 1962

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. Photo: Ole Jørgensen

There were chicken inside and outside the Herning Højskole, one of the main venues of the biennale. There were also bees in the adjacent garden. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has installed burned-wood beehives and turned their activity into music. The sound is transmitted from the hives out into the landscape. By moving around the installation, you can modulate the composition.

Mahza Karimizadeh, Rhizome. Photo: Jens Wolter

Hans Haacke, Kondensationswürfel (Condensation Cube), 1964. Reconstruction by ZERO foundation, 2017

Hans Haacke‘s transparent acrylic cube contains a small amount of water. Condensation begins to form and droplets run down the walls of the box, changing according to the ambient light and temperature. The work’s appearance therefore depends upon the environment in which it is placed. As Haacke explained in 1965: “The conditions are comparable to a living organism which reacts in a flexible manner to its surroundings. The image of condensation cannot be precisely predicted. It is changing freely, bound only by statistical limits. I like this freedom.”

Spencer Tunick, Socle du Monde (Herning, Denmark) 2016, Courtesy of the artist

Spencer Tunick, Socle du Monde (Herning, Denmark) 2016. Photo: Jens Wolter

Hesselholdt & Mejlvang, The Invisible Territory, 2017, Socle du Monde Biennale. Photo: Ole Jørgensen

When you enter the rooms dedicated to Hesselholdt & Mejlvang‘s installation, you see a white floor, white walls, white furniture, white objects, etc. The space immediately evokes one of those ZERO experiments. But as soon as black light fills the room, heinous sentences cover all surfaces. “Go back to your pig land!” “They came to invade. PERIOD!” “Kill all you faggots now”, etc. The artists found these racist and bigoted sentences on online message boards and comment sections. The duo then copied them using luminous fluorescent paint. The effect is upsetting. You’re tempted to stay so that you can read everything but you are also compelled to get out of the room as quickly as possible such is the unpleasant effect that these words have on you.

The 2017 Socle du Monde Biennale – to challenge the Earth, the Moon, the Sun & the Stars remains open until 27 August 2017 at HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning Højskole, Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelt’s Museum, The Geometric Gardens and HEART’s Sculpture Park. In Herning, Denmark.

My photos of the biennale are on flickr.

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