"Gluecksgott2"
Duration: 1 hour, 2004
Performed: November, 2005
Exhibition: Gluecksgott2, Goethe Institut, Sarajevo, Bosnia
Curator: Ivan Civic and Constanze Fischbeck
The idea was born after reading Bertold Brechts "Gluecksgott arie". We tried to figure out if there still could be a generous, all giving, good person in this world, to show us the way to happiness and redemption. We were thinking whether our society was ready or not to consider the police as such a noble and nice person... so Constanze went to Sarajevo to live for a while as a foreigner and I am a foreigner in Berlin, so I decided to talk to the police here and get some comforting answers to several questions that were in my mind... To my surprise, no police wanted to participate in my interview... they were scared I guess... of being put in the wrong light by an artist... but I did get the permission to film the Berlin Police Choir... only te eastern one, because the western rejected me. After many telephone calls and pathetic swearing I wouldn't use any material against anybody, finally a young police pr lady was given the task to talk to me in front of my camera... the speech never got intimate and it was all about clichès and no news came out of it. I asked the police choir to sing their police choir hymn for me and that turned out to be a very nice video. The hymn is about how the police is always there for us. That was sweet to film and to listen to. Afterwards I added the video interview with the police lady and tried to translate all live, in Sarajevo, into bosnian, in front of my public, in the Goethe Institut. I also contacted Playmobil to sponsor me with 300 toy policemen. They did and I distributed symbolic "protectors" to the people who saw my performance in Sarajevo. I guess the "gluecksgott" is still not here for us... All we are left with are the tiny plastic police toys from playmobil.