Luiza Nader (University of Warsaw and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, 2009) / Lukasz Ronduda and Piotr Uklanski (Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw)
Christoph Büchel has pulled it off again: this time with a Swingers Club at Secession in Vienna.
After causing a scandal with a commission gone out of hand at Mass MoCA and a legal battle over the rights in 2007 (read more here); and after provoking protest after inviting all registered political parties in Germany – including the extreme right-wing NPD – to present themselves at the Fridericianum in Kassel in 2008, this time Büchel gets politicians in Austria (and in his home country Switzerland) started – with hosting a fully functioning sex club in the basement of the venerable Secession in Vienna, right next to Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven frieze.
Officially this is all about making a comparison to the scandal Klimt’s erotic imagery caused at the time of inauguration in 1902, but, in regard to today’s Vienna, Büchel’s intervention couldn’t be timed better: there is a major election coming up in Vienna, and Social Democrat Michael Häupl is under siege from far-right populist Heinz Christian Strache, the contemporary version of Haider. Last week, Strache had already attacked his opponents with calls for leaving the European Union, ‘we don’t want minarets in our landscape’ remarks, and polemics against asylum seekers in general. Now he’s jumped on the Swingers issue, arguing that €90,000 of taxpayers’ money were now perversely used for a sex club (which is open during the night, while during the day the exhibition visitors can inspect the interiors and accessories). The Secession, however, stresses that the club is actually run on its own budget, and that the institution raises two-thirds of its annual budget independently anyway. But why should Strache care about facts when he can play the bigotry and anti-art card? Though this could back fire: even the short-witted might remember that Strache himself is not necessarily always a man of classical taste, having given autographs on the boobs of more-or-less willing potential voters.
Büchel surely anticipated the right wing’s reaction: he changed the famous Secession motto over the entrance – Der Zeit ihre Kunst /Der Kunst ihre Freiheit (Art for its time/ freedom for art) to Der Kunst ihre Kunst / Der Zeit ihre Freiheit (Art for art / freedom for time), certainly well aware of the existence of Strache’s Freedom Party.
