Eine zutiefst erschreckende Meldung kam gestern aus dem Kölner Landgericht. Der lokale Stadt-Anzeiger berichtete unter anderem:

„Das Landgericht Köln hat in einer einstweiligen Verfügung der Westdeutschen Lotterie GmbH in Münster (Westlotto) untersagt, Hartz-IV-Empfängern “die Teilnahme an öffentlichen Glücksspielen (…) zu ermöglichen”. Dazu zählt auch das Lotto-Spiel. Gerichtssprecher Dirk Eßer bestätigte am Mittwoch einen entsprechenden Bericht der “Westdeutschen Zeitung”.“

Unter dem Vorwand, den Outcast vor sich selbst zu schützen, wird hier an Methoden angeschlossen, die unserer demokratisch legitimierten Justiz völlig unwürdig erscheinen. Wir fragen uns und die interessierte Öffentlichkeit, welche Gesetzeslage einen solchen Beschluß zuläßt und seit wann. Weiter im Text:

„Konkret werde Westlotto auferlegt, keine Spiel- oder Wettscheine oder Rubbellose zu verkaufen an Personen, die “Spieleinsätze riskieren, die in keinem Verhältnis zu ihrem Einkommen stehen, insbesondere Hartz IV-Empfänger sind. (…)“

Die Münsteraner Lotto-Zentrale will den Beschluß zwar tapfer umsetzen, zeigt sich aber (aus welcher Motivation auch immer) schockiert und erhebt die berechtigte Frage, wie ein solches Verbot denn in der Praxis ausgeführt werden solle. Als freischaffender Dichter, der zwar kein Lotto spielt, sich diese Option aber schon rein aus Gleichheits- und Freiheitsgedanken wie sie im Grundgesetz (hoffentlich noch) verankert sind, jederzeit vorbehalten möchte und der sich per allgemein bekanntem Berufsrisiko finanziell nicht selten knapp um die Hartz IV-Bemessungsgrenzen herum bewegt, möchten wir folgende Vorschläge zur Debatte beitragen: den Gedanken des Kölner Beschlusses zuende zu denken, hieße doch, Hartz IV-Empfängern bei sämtlichen ihrer kargen Ausgaben korrigierend zur Seite zu stehen: im Supermarkt angefangen. Suchtmittel wie Alkohol, Zigaretten, Fast Food, Medikamente: ab sofort für alle tabu, welche aus dem System ordentlich bezahlter Arbeit gefiltert wurden. Vollkornbrot, Fruchtsäfte und Frischgemüse: gesund zwar, aber eigentlich zu teuer für uns triste kaufkraftarme Gestalten. Das etwas ambivalente Problem ließe sich vielleicht mit Rationsscheinen lösen. Oder es bräuchte eine offene Kennzeichnung: was ein Erwerbsloser oder working poor einkaufen darf und was nicht. Woran aber soll man uns erkennen? Natürlich bräuchte auch dies eine Kennzeichnung. Politiker und Richter: erlegt uns doch ein grellrotes A (etwa für arm, arbeitslos, asozial, alternativdenkend) auf, das wir gut sichtbar an unserer Kleidung zu tragen haben. (Für mögliche Folgen unserer Vorschläge allerdings übernehmen wir, im Sinne des herrschenden Zeitgeists, keinerlei Verantwortung.)

Das Monatsende bringt essentielle Meldungen zur rheinischen Existenz: nicht nur, daß die Länge des Rheins wegen eines Zahlendrehers bisher öffentlich meist falsch mit 1320 statt mit richtig 1230 Kilometern angegeben wird, wie der Kölner Biologie-Professor Bruno Kremer laut gestrigen Zeitungsmeldungen per eigenen Vermessungen herausgefunden haben will, nein, es existiert sogar recht unvermittelt eine neue Rheinmetropole, wenn auch zunächst nur für einen Monat, wie der folgenden Ankündigung (merci erneut an Roland Bergère) entnommen werden kann:

Ecole Regionale des Beaux-Arts in Besançon: Copacabana doesn’t exist! About the existence of the Rhin Rhône territory

If there is a place where human utopia has been achieved, that place is Copacabana. It is decadence in the poetic sense. The decadence in Copacabana works as a curtain, a protection for everything which happens within. Copacabana doesn’t have a centre, nor links with golden youth… It is a sort of oasis for all kinds of… Copacabana is wonderful. It is a wonderful town. Copacabana doesn’t exist!

This exhibition is the result of work carried out in a workshop of research at the ERBA. It was initiated by Philippe Terrier-Hermann and carried out jointly by students and two artists in residence, Ariane Bosshard, graphic artist, and Maxime Brygo, photographer. The question of creating a Rhône-Rhine agglomeration, utopian conurbation of two million inhabitants, stretching in an arc from Le Creusot to Bâle, including especially Dijon, Besançon and Mulhouse, has been the driving force of this workshop based on the question of how the territory can be represented. Indeed, isn’t this territory for now a mere mental representation? Will not this new entity measuring more than 300 Km in length, with an efficient high speed train network as backbone, exist only for an elite or a limited circle of informed civil servants and elected officials? Does the development scheme take into account all the essential aspirations of the inhabitants in all their diversity? Is grouping of competences in order to establish centres of excellence to exist on an international level compatible with the necessity to preserve social benefits and access to culture. Where are the centre and the boundaries of an agglomeration? How do we represent a new metropolis made up of diverse cities, each having their own specific identity, equally historically as mythically? We have tried to reply to these questions both together and individually and present our diverse research here. Maxime Brygo, in his photographic work attempting to represent this agglomeration has searched for images meaningfully illustrating history and symbols. He questions the subject of identification with a territory, its history and its potential monuments. Two notes, one official, the other descriptive are given to each of these pictures. In this way, Maxime Brygo offers us the chance to dare to assume the position of judge between the image and its potential interpretations; he leaves the images to float in an undefined status. With this body of work, Maxime Brygo asserts that this territory exists in its capacity to link these stories and their representations. As an accompaniment to this research, Ariane Bosshard has reflected on the traceability of this mental territory and on the good way of realizing a book about such a myth. So, she has conceived a black book, a book to elaborate mentally only from what is given to us: the oral description of the pictures. Thus she also plays with the zones of mental construction existing between words and images.

Artists’ representation of a territory stimulates possibilities and their perception of these possibilities is potentially utopian. Though attempting to activate a deliberately real territory, artists, through their visions have potentialities for turning them into Utopia (Nicolas Moulin, Bernard Voïta, Edwin Zwakman…). Either by the use of shifting, altering shapes, framing, darkening, … or any odd vision, the works shown here transform our perception of the world and lead us to look at it in another way. Gabor Osz shows a photograph of a beach, normally a place for leisure, in a warlike vision, having converted a bunker into a camera obscura. The virgin Namibian landscape by Balthasar Burkhard offers possibilities. David Renaud and Philippe Terrier-Hermann present maps which, though realistic, are made unusual by their own point of views. Ayako Yoshimura depicts a new territory, between utopia and heterotopy : a hyper megalopolis combining Tokyo, Shanghai, São Paulo, Chicago, New York and Yokohama; Marie-José Burki presents a scan of the Genevan suburbs. A manure heap by Philippe Gronon plays as a counterpoint to three cliché-like landscape paintings by Lisa Milroy. Sébastian Diaz-Morales’ movie takes us into unknown and unidentified areas, though real. Simon Faithfull’s video showing an abandoned fishing station in the Falkland Islands inhabited again by the native population as well as Neal Beggs’ performance about appropriating public spaces suggest an opportunity for hope. Delphine Bedel has travelled the mythical Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, Gérard Collin-Thiébaud has wandered through Corsica and Valérie Jouve has approached Munster by river, rail and road. With ‘Celebration’, Quirine Racké and Helena Muskens present a town built in 1996 by Disney, which is how a capitalistic firm has seized the concept of Utopia…

Innovation may bring some practical applications contributing to activate some concepts of utopia in its desire of a better ‘living together’ but it ought to be done in respect of community ideals specific to its genesis. Should utopia be applied thanks to innovations only available for an elite, it would result again in a dead end, in the same way as the one which led to the dismantling of the housing schemes buildings of the 60’s and 70’s.

Putting in place utopias based on innovation should benefit to everybody, far from the law-and-order drifts of gated communities or other barrio cerrados. These walled residential areas started in the USA, are developing from Buenos Aires to Cape Town and show a worrying rise in Europe. This fantasized Rhine-Rhône metropolis, in which it would take 20 minutes for a Besançon resident to attend an opera in Dijon or for a Belfort inhabitant to be in Mulhouse thanks to high speed trains is surely a pleasing idea, but on the condition that access to the trains should not be challenged by an elitist commercial policy which would again result in a new failure for Utopia. At least, this is the message which seems to be expressed by the artists and their ‘territorial’ visions!

«Today, the world is too dangerous for anything less than utopia» Richard Buckminster Fuller

Opening: Jan 28th from 8pm to midnight
From 28th January to 26th February 2010: Open from Monday to Friday from 2pm to 7pm (closed from 6th to 23rd February)