In Quest of the Perfect Location

4/12 2007

Dellbrügge & de Moll:
IN QUEST OF THE PERFECT LOCATION

The Danes are considered the happiest people in the world, and Copenhagen ranks among the metropolises with the highest quality of life. Nevertheless, the city, which in recent years has been spruced up into a comprehensively designed boomtown, seems conformist and a bit boring. Or it would if not for two reserves that have remained unassimilated for decades, a thorn in the side of those who would normalize things: Tivoli and Christiania, the traditional amusement park and the free town of dropouts. They are states of exception per se. Places outside of all places, as Foucault would call them: heterotopias. They celebrate extreme states and ecstasy and still compete for the status of the most popular tourist attraction in Copenhagen.

Dellbrügge & de Moll went out in search of the perfect location. With one foot in the establishment and the other in the loser’s paradise, they are recording fading diversity and the gentrification of industrial wastelands and working-class neighborhoods. How are atmospheres created? What moods do they produce and why does one feel excluded or at home? The key motifs include the flaunting of lifestyles, antagonisms of work and idleness, order and disarray and their evaluation by society. The present volume and its illustrations convey that Tivoli and Christiania are alternative worlds that offer room inside to that which is lacking outside.

Dellbrügge & de Moll are working at the points of intersection between public, digital and institutional spaces. Utilizing traditional as well as innovative artistic techniques and media they have, since the mideighties, developed a range of interdisciplinary projects. Starting from critical investigation of the field of artistic production, reception, presentation and its sociopolitical conditions their work has focused increasingly on issues of public space. Dellbrügge & de Moll see the role of artists as exemplary communicators tracing possibilities to initiate change from within the realm of art.
www.workworkwork.de

The project IN QUEST OF THE PERFECT LOCATION was funded by the Danish International Visual Art Exchange Program DIVA.
The Christiania Researcher in Residence Program CRIR made our research in the free town possible.
The publication was partly funded by the Danish Arts Council’s Committee for International Visual Arts.

Christiane Dellbrügge
Ralf de Moll

2007

Format: 16,5 x 24
96 sider, omslag m. flapper
vægt: 280 g.
Text & design: Dellbrügge & de Moll
Translation: Steven Lindberg
Copy-editing: Michael Baers
Proof reading: Sybille Dellbrügge
Photos: Dellbrügge & de Moll.
Valeria Schulte-Fischedick
(p.94 – 95)
Production: Medialis, Berlin
Print run: 500
Udgivet med støtte fra Statens Kunstråd