Kami, Khokha, And (World Heritage) Tensta konsthall 10.5—30.9. 2012

Hinrich Sachs aftonbladet.se

Tensta konsthall

översätt Konica Minolta 1 Kami, Khokha, (World A new Stockholm character has also Heritage) is an exhibition by artist been added to the nine already united Hinrich Sachs based on the television by Sachs’ international, hybrid muppet program . Shown in more ensemble. The Stockholm character is than 140 countries, Sesame Street has developed directly from drawings and become part of our international collective written narratives made by local school experience. The exhibition at Tensta children at Askebyskolan in Rinkeby. konsthall focuses on the culturally specific From September 2011–May 2012 Tensta Sesame characters who, since the show’s konsthall’s mediator Emily Fahlén, television debut in the United States in professional costume designer Sara 1969, have been specially developed in over Forsberg and numerous teachers from 20 countries as part of a license agreement Askebyskolan have conducted workshops with . These characters with the children. These lessons have include Kami, the first HIV-positive revolved around Sesame Street and taken Sesame figure from the South African up various activities, like learning what a version of the program; Zeliboba, a kind character is, practicing English language and imaginative spirit who lives inside skills, sewing and creating and an oak tree from the Russian production creating rap songs based on characters known as Ulitsa Sezam; and Khokha, an invented by the children. Egyptian girl muppet, who is keen to learn body-building. Inside Tensta konsthall’s exhibition space the assembled Sesame characters Nine Sesame characters from different performatively appear in a theatre-like national versions of the TV show—from setting against the backdrop of a hand- China, , Israel, , painted Stockholm skyline. The exhibition Palestine, Russia and elsewhere— space is thus transformed into a gigantic have been gathered together at Tensta installation, where set design helps prompt konsthall. This is a unique assembly questions about how present-day children’s since the characters only exist otherwise culture is created and represented through inside their respective Sesame programs. popular media. In particular the project investigates the ideological power of a Originally the producers of Sesame children’s program as commodity that Street intended to use the addictive effects can be bought and sold. What happens of television for good purposes—for when material from one cultural and instance, to prepare children for school— economic context is translated and re- by mixing educational elements with coded into another? What roles are played features from commercial TV. Because by imitation, interpretation, emancipation of its expressive aesthetics, humor and and cultural translation in the educational music, Sesame Street became an instant sphere surrounding children’s play? success. Kami, Khokha, Bert and Ernie (World Heritage) offers up different Another layer of Kami, Khokha, interpretations of this original material. Bert and Ernie (World Heritage) is The Sesame puppets are put on display developed by giving some characters a in an exhibition form, giving them a high voice. In we listen to actress Dina cultural value. Labels, exhibition props Al-Saleh who is heard in the version of and lighting—all familiar museological the show Alam Simsim, sharing a real- tools—accompany and expand the life memory but in a voice that would possibilities for their interpretation. The be easily recognizable to an Egyptian displacement of such materials from a audience as her fictional muppet character, child’s world into the art context allows Khokha. A further aspect of the sound us to question what our shared cultural installation activates specific Swedish heritage looks like in an era of cognitive narratives, fantasies and meanings via capitalism. Ultimately the exhibition the voices of two actors from the dubbed invites a broad cultural discussion around Svenska Sesam version of the program collective experiences shaped by concepts that aired on state TV channel 1 from such as popular cultural, heritage and 1979–1983. Here Lars Amble (Kermit) value. and Peter Harrysson (Ernie) perform a unique narrative—some of which includes Hinrich Sachs is an artist and writer based scenarios imagined and authored by the in Basel and Stockholm where he has been children at Askebyskolan in Rinkeby. a professor at the Royal Institute of Art

2 Kami, Khokha, Bert And Ernie (World Heritage) since 2007. He is interested in displacing example, a photographer and a biologist and combining different kinds of cultural have been invited to be presented and material by making critical comments and represented. Gäst hos: Anna Gili, reflections on communicative and cultural Designer was part of this series and frameworks. Working internationally, he shown at Moderna Museet Projekt in has recently participated in exhibitions in Stockholm in 1999. Maastricht, Istanbul, Athens, Rennes and Tucson, and published Lost Once More, Parts of Kami, Khokha, Bert and a volume of short stories, with Christoph Ernie (World Heritage) are realized Keller Editions/JRP, Zurich. A theatre in collaboration with Askebyskolan in play will be published with OEI editör in Rinkeby. With support from Baselland, spring 2012. Basel-Stadt, The Embassy of Switzerland in Stockholm, Pro Helvetia and Royal The elaboration and transference of Institute of Art, Stockholm. The opening cultural material comprises the core of is in collaboration with Livstycket. Five World Heritage Landscapes, a public artwork realized in collaboration with and for Cecilien-Gymnasium (Cecilien Highschool) in Düsseldorf (2004–2010). These ideas are also central to the exhibition Kami, Khokha, Bert and Ernie (all together now) (2004), which illuminated the narrative structures of the children’s TV program Sesame Street, and to the project International Auction of the Basque Euskara Typefaces, Bilbao (2001). In another series Sachs has examined the content of contemporary image production. This has taken the form of “portraits”, where, for

Programs and events as part of Kami, Khokha, Ernie and Bert (World Khokha, Bert And Ernie (World Heritage) children are welcome to a free Heritage). face painting.

Free and open to the public with no Saturday 19.5 registration required. 13:00 – 16:00 Family Day Thursday 10.5 For children ages 6 and up with their 14:00 – 21:00 parents, led by mediator Emily Fahlén. Opening Exhibition opening with introduction A special guided tour of the exhibition for by artist Hinrich Sachs and Maria children and their parents followed by an Lind, director of Tensta konsthall, arts and crafts workshop. Come explore at 18:00. Visitors are also invited to Tensta konsthall and meet muppets from stop by Livstycket’s Spring Market, around the world, learning all about simultaneously happening in Tensta at their interests and personalities. See what Tenstagången 20 from 8:00–20:00. Sesame Street episodes from Egypt, Russia and South Africa are like. Make Saturday 12.5 your very own Sesame scene diorama. 13:00 – 17:00 Tea and Coffee Salon Wednesday 23.5 Members from the Women’s Center Tensta 18:30 Hjulsta invite the public for a cup of tea Learning How To Desire: or coffee prepared according to their Commodification and Children’s TV own traditions, such as coffee made on Samo Tomšicˇ and Hinrich Sachs in a charcoal grill. An assortment of cakes Conversation and pastries are served. The Women’s Philosopher Samo Tomšicˇ will Center also offers their own handmade join the artist to discuss the role of products from recycled textiles for sale. commodification in the constitution In conjunction with the exhibition Kami, of contemporary subjectivity—in

översätt 3 particular looking at popular culture A grumpy carrot, Jennifer Lopez and and education through media. What are Mr. Pencil—these are some ideas for the repercussions of integrating local characters that have been considered in traditions and cultural specificities into a the collaboration between Hinrich Sachs, commodity language? How do popular Tensta konsthall and the school class culture and education through television C5 at Askebyskolan, Rinkeby. Through contribute to the integration of subjects in storytelling, costume design and music the capitalist social link? Psychoanalysis making the students have collectively helps us understand that the success story developed their own Stockholm character of capitalism is intimately tied to the fact who is a part of the exhibition Kami, that it teaches human beings how to desire. Khokha, Bert and Ernie (World Heritage)—a crazy, brave, helpful Tomšicˇč is a philosopher and translator muppet in orange shaggy fur who works from Ljubljana. He completed his PhD at a bread factory but loves to eat earth studies at the University of Ljubljana and raisins. The Namegiving Party and is currently Humboldt fellow at the features a colorful parade and musical Humboldt University in Berlin. Previously performances by the children under the he was researcher at the Institute of direction of music teacher and children’s Philosophy in Ljubljana and at the Jan van TV personality, Rolando Pomo. The Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Fields of afternoon will include birthday cake and research include Freudian and Lacanian several surprises—including the unveiling psychoanalysis, contemporary French of the name of this new Stockholm philosophy, Marxism and structuralism. character.

Thursday 24.5 Saturday 26.5 12:30 – 14:00 13:00 – 17:00 Namegiving Party Tea and Coffee Salon At Askebyskolan in Rinkeby, Members from the Women’s Center Tensta Askebykroken 22, Spånga. Hjulsta invite the public for a cup of tea or coffee prepared according to their own traditions, such as coffee made on their interests and personalities. See what a charcoal grill. An assortment of cakes Sesame Street episodes from Egypt, and pastries are served. The Women’s Russia and South Africa are like. Make Center also offers their own handmade your very own Sesame scene diorama. products from recycled textiles for sale. In conjunction with the exhibition Kami, Saturday 16.6 Khokha, Ernie and Bert (World 14:00 Heritage) children are welcome to a free Guided Tour by Laurel Ptak face painting. Tour led by Tensta konsthall curator Laurel Ptak focusing on issues of Wednesday 30.5 intellectual property, edutainment, and 18:30 cognitive capitalism at stake inside the Guided Tour by Hinrich Sachs exhibition Kami, Khokha, Bert and Tour of the exhibition led by artist Hinrich Ernie (World Heritage). Sachs, contextualizing his project Kami, Khokha, Bert and Ernie (World Wednesday 29.8 Heritage) in relationship to his artistic 18:30 larger practice. Guided Tour by Hinrich Sachs Tour of the exhibition led by artist Hinrich Wednesday 6.6 Sachs, discussing specific aspects of his 13:00 – 16:00 artistic practice and the project Kami, Family Day Khokha, Bert and Ernie (World For children ages 6 and up with their Heritage) in relationship to the notion of parents, led by mediator Emily Fahlén. voice.

A special guided tour of the exhibition for 10.5 – 30.9 children and their parents followed by an Class visits arts and crafts workshop. Come explore Free for schools, led by mediator Emily Tensta konsthall and meet muppets from Fahlén. around the world, learning all about

4 Kami, Khokha, Bert And Ernie (World Heritage) Exhibition tours and workshops Objects As Contemporary Agents specifically created for school classes can Edited Skype conversation between artist be scheduled by contacting Emily Fahlén Hinrich Sachs and curator Laurel Ptak at [email protected] or 08 36 07 63. LP I am curious to hear how you first became interested in utilizing Sesame For Tensta konsthall’s opening hours Street as a kind of artistic material. How and most up-to-date information visit us did it happen? online at www.tenstakonsthall.se. HS As an artist partly using an ethnographic or anthropological methodology I came across it looking at tendencies to use cultural formats—TV programs, lifestyle magazines, etc—as commodities proactively marketed to follow the flows of global capital. There was also a second strand, observing a protective impulse in the identification of “world heritage” where architecture, cultural sites or other intangible forms of heritage develop fully corporate branding structures as their political and practical realities.

LP In this project you take up the cultural form of the art exhibition in order to materialize relationships between education and the field of consumption. What happens when material from a popular children’s TV show enters the exhibition space? Why connect these education from such influences. But today, spheres? one can observe the impact of commercial interests modeling education itself. HS Art and education both have a foot in psychic experience, though both with LP With the specific example of Sesame different regimes of organizing and Street, it’s interesting to understand offering space for such experiences. Like the way it has structured itself like education, the current situation in the field a corporation, licensing the use of of art seems mixed up with ingredients characters and materials for children’s from the gallery’s market logic to the education as a global franchise. But what museum’s collection logic to public art’s does it mean for you as an artist to work entertainment logic. I see many reasons to with these proprietary puppets, costumes, particularly follow and work with material characters here in this context, to bring stemming from the field of kids’ TV them in as a kind of material for sculpture “edutainment”. or installation?

LP I’ve always found this particular term HS The use of materials is not about the fascinating. Its merging of the words psychology of the artist but about other education and entertainment reflect so choices. That choice can be a way of clearly an erasure of boundaries between answering the pressures the artist feels what can be viewed as a social good and coming from society, the system, the a commercial product today—the two world. Like a bank shot in a game of pool, are increasingly inseparable and it is one plays off the side to get somewhere. literalized in the very structure of this For me using puppets, animals, objects word. from a child’s world can be part of playing off the side. HS Let’s say historically speaking, the space of education is modeled by These objects are interesting because they ideological and belief systems. Pedagogy can be more transparent, spilling more, has made an effort to partially separate or closer to opening up onto wider or

översätt 5 more intense meanings than other types of objects? Am wondering if an adult male of objects from the contemporary world. is aware of his desire towards a particular For instance, if you choose an industrial car as being prescripted? object it can mean a lot in its selection and also produce metaphor, but it is LP But there is a disconnect here. From more contained inside a rational world. the point of view of the commercial world Children’s objects can be both more our emotional responses to objects exist as straightforward and more emotional. a form of calculation. For instance, at an Choosing them from an adult perspective advertising agency it would be completely as subjects and materials for an artistic well articulated, researched or backed work makes them interesting in their up by data what one’s response to a possibility to narrate, to be emotional and particular car might be. But from the point to make us aware of the constructedness of of view of individuals we tend to resist these objects. understanding our emotions or desires as being predictable or measurable. This LP Elaborate on that. precise relationship between awareness and unawareness in the equation is really HS I believe that objects—and materials interesting to think about. too—are influencing behavioral patterns, convictions, as well as perceptions much HS Objects have been agents before, more than we want to believe according to but particular objects—I am thinking the ideals of the self-contained individual, of consumer oriented communication the modern subject who wishes to happily technologies—are becoming central identify the world through concepts, ideas agents by now. The iPhone is probably and beliefs. the contemporary Tamagotchi. Do you remember that late-90s techno-being The scriptedness of our emotional that needed to be taken care of? It was reactions to objects, from a commercial a handheld digital pet, a technological perspective, also turns objects into agents. device that looked like an egg and one But maybe this isn’t a common experience would communicate with it through pushing buttons to feed it or give attention from ubiquitous commercialization. to it. If one didn’t do that enough, the Tamagotchi would die and you would have HS How to stay an amateur?! That’s what to buy a new one. Designers in Japanese I think is a serious artistic problematic culture are openly animating technology today. How to enter or re-enter a space of and objects. This possibility of an “anima” activity which allows for less consumption other seems to me very present in or value gain? characters, particularly the furry ones of Sesame Street. LP Can exhibitions offer this?

LP One way to think about the Tamagotchi HS Good exhibitions offer this. This is one is that it transformed social reproduction reason why the site of exhibition is more into a kind of digital labor that we want important to me than the art object itself. to perform. An interesting question came up in a class I was teaching today with LP In fact, none of the works in this BA students, studying art. They were exhibition are designated as art objects at questioning the boundaries between being all—they are rather “exhibition copies”. a producer and consumer in contemporary Can you explain the difference? life. We were especially speaking with regards to digital technologies and online HS The logic of the exhibition copy allows culture where producing is so routinely me to introduce and to display objects demanded of you and its surplus value with their indexical as well as iconographic can be so easily extracted by others power, and at the same time bypass the without you ever noticing. In terms of discussion of the value of art objects. In their own cultural production, these parallel, I believe that the presence of students where wondering how to remain objects and materials also transmits and enthusiasts—and as they put it, how to brings back into the perspective important stay unemployed. Essentially they were questions about cultural heritage—how it contemplating the relative impossibility is happening, performed, preserved and today of withdrawing of one’s creativity transmitted.

6 Kami, Khokha, Bert And Ernie (World Heritage) The singularity of the object has for a lies between experience and ownership is long time become a central carrier of how definitely at play here. meaning is released, mostly because it complies with the possibility or promise HS Experience—I do not really know how to fully transport an artistic meaning important that is to Sesame workshop. from one place to another as the art object Ownership is claimed by the corporation travels. However, the performative levels for iconographies and narratives, and of meaning making that are released by maybe educational methods. The TV artworks within their given sites, contexts programs today are also openly identified and societal settings are not transferrable. as transmitters for marketing, for example, the Swiss multinational Nestlé’s LP Just recently I sat in on a presentation involvement in the Russian Ulitsa Sezam about intellectual property given to a and exclusive on-air sponsorship by a life group of young artists by an American insurance company in the South African lawyer. He mentioned something . fascinating, that following the logic of current copyright litigation he foresees LP So what are the effects when a social set that a new type of intellectual property of values becomes underpinned by rather will soon emerge. This will follow and conservative economic structures? We expand upon the current logic of copyright need to understand these in relationship to which allows for the expression of ideas to one another. be proprietary. This new form however, which he coined as “aesthetic property”, HS It might be that the measurable results, would move well beyond protecting objects the statistics of quantities of viewers are to include what we would describe as enough for them, rather than asking if “experiences”. This seemed to me a desire children are becoming literate, more to formulate how something performative independent, or if the funky role model might be more directly ownable. This of Khokha has sociological effects on brings us back to the discussion of Sesame gender patterns? Khokha’s promo says Street—questioning where that boarder that she would like to become a doctor and an astronaut, that she wants to know air comes to Pakistan, Indonesia and everything. What does that do in terms Bangladesh... of the effects on gender roles in Egyptian society which could be perceived as LP What creates the conditions for these dominantly patriarchal, what would that programs to emerge in their specific time, mean concretely? In short, the speculative place and context is definitely worth rhetorics of possible educational effects reflecting on. might be bolder than actual educational effects. That’s why the airing of the HS And let’s ask ourselves: what might programs has a political dimension, have been the role of Svenska Sesam in whether wanted or not. the Swedish context of the late-1970s?

LP But there are other political dimensions at stake here too. For instance, isn’t there always a bent of liberalism to the production of Sesame Street that carries from context to context—even when the specifics of how its pedagogy is formulated change?

HS I guess you are right. At least in the initial situation of marketing and embedding a new production in a new context. Sesame Street in the United States of the late 1960s was coming from a liberal drive, in relation to a given historical context, as it was in the German context of 1972, and so it might appear in the Egyptian and South African context of 2000. Now, twelve years later, the liberal

översätt 7 Exhibition Checklist Hands of Gigantosaurus polyester fabric, overprinted in silkscreen, Alam Simsim VCD blue polystyrene, polyfoam, sound device, battery; 2009 color offset print on paper sleeve; 2008 Haneen plush, felt, cotton, styrofoam, synthetic fur, felt, paint, glue; exhibition copy; 2004 cotton, cardboard, polyfoam, sturofoam, paint; exhibition copy; 2004 Kami synthetic fur, felt, cotton, wool, styrofoam, paper, paint, cardboard, glue; Dafi plush, felt, cotton, styrofoam, paint, exhibition copy; 2004 glue; exhibition copy; 2004 Khokha plush, felt, cotton, styrofoam, Don Quixote’s Nag chipboard, putty, glue, acrylic paint; exhibition copy; 2004 paint; 2012 Khokha’s Voice audio recording, Arabic, Drum calf skin, wood, glue, screws; 4 minute loop; exhibition version; 2008–09 exhibition copy; 2012 Moomin Wine Gum and Licorice sugar, Ernie felt, cotton, rubber, fake fur, glucose syrup, glucose-fructose syrup, blended fabric, leather, glue; exhibition wheat starch, modified starch, acidity copy; 2004 regulator, licorice extract, salt, flavorings, glazing agents, colors, plant extract, in Ernie polyfoam, plush, polyester taffeta, partly transparent polystyrene bag; 2012 polypropylene cotton, rubber; exhibition copy; 2012 Necklace styrofoam balls, paint, florist’s wire, plastic flowers; exhibition copy; 2012 Ernie and Kermit’s Voices audio recording, Swedish, 25 minute, loop; Stockholm Panorama inkjet on coated exhibition version; 2012 paper, chipboard, wood, screws, putty, glue, weights; exhibition copy; 2011–12

Terms of Use projection from pdf-file, variable dimensions; quoted from www.sesameworkshop.org; exhibition version; 2012

Unnamed Stockholm Character fake fur, felt, cotton, blended fabric, glue; exhibition copy; 2012

Xiao Mei Zhi plush, felt, cotton, styrofoam, paint, glue; exhibition copy; 2004

Zeliboba felt, cotton, rubber, fake fur, Askebyskolan Rinkeby blended fabric, glue, feathers; exhibition copy; 2004 The Embassy of Switzerland in Stockholm

8 Kami, Khokha, Bert And Ernie (World Heritage)