2008:Interventions

Hell is coming/World ends today

Andreas Templin

Foto, Alfonso Herranz.

Photo, Alfonso Herranz.

Foto, Alfonso Herranz.

Photo, Alfonso Herranz.

Hell Is Coming /World Ends Today, a situationist play for the inner city of Madrid, is a temporary intervention staged in Madrid. It has a duration of one week and includes a total of 151 participants.

In the work Hell is Coming/World Ends Today, Andreas Templin is showing reference to the Situationist movement, its strong impact and continuous flow and, in relation to that, points at some of the common problems that movements seem to be afflicted by: The moment of its pure realisation by an individuals mind vs. the competitiveness of styles, attitudes and trends of specific concepts in society.

In this artwork, a few of the key philosophical thesis which sum up, from Templin‘s viewpoint, the strongest and most direct impact on the individual in contemporary Western societies culminate in an ephemeral play.

This happens by transferring these philosophers‘ names into daily life by asking 150 inhabitants of Madrid to wear urban fashion items with label-prints for one week in their daily routine. While simply following their daily routine, the artwork itself sinks into the urban space, the philosophical concepts compete face-to-face with the other label concepts and brandings in the public domain.

These concepts and their visual appearance are:

Andreas Templin: Speed and devastation. Paul Virilio.

Speed and devastation. Paul Virilio.

Andreas Templin: The camp/the concentration camp. Giorgio Agamben.

The camp/the concentration camp. Giorgio Agamben.

Andreas Templin: Power. Michel Foucault.

Power. Michel Foucault.

Andreas Templin: Hatred/fundamentalism/represented by an re-enactment of fanatic right-wing demonstrations. This is staged by a doppelganger of a preacher standing around at various street-corners of Madrid.

Hatred/fundamentalism/represented by an re-enactment of fanatic right-wing demonstrations. This is staged by a doppelganger of a preacher standing around at various street-corners of Madrid.

The questions this work raises are: Are these names already ‘labels’ (or do people simply acclaim them as big labels) or do they transport meaning? Can such an ephemeral intervention survive as an artwork in the eyes of the public?

There are a website available with special contributions by Dr. Andreas L. Hofbauer and Dennis De La Haye.