OPENING DEEP STORAGE PROJECT

critics and media on DEEP STORAGE ART PROJECT

Deepest storage on Earth

Danish conceptual artist gathers Bangkokian blood to send it to the bottom of the ocean

By: ANDREW J. WEST

Published: 12/03/2009 at 12:00 AM

Newspaper section: Outlook

' Welcome to eternal life," smiles Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth as he poses for the camera with a contributor clasping a certificate stained with a sample of their own blood. The participants had just donated their DNA to be included with a sculpture that will be exhibited at the bottom of the Mariana Trench - the deepest destination on Earth.

Hornsleth, a conceptual artist with a controversial reputation in his own country for provocative art antics, is visiting Thailand for a live event as part of the "Deep Storage Art Project" world tour. He made international headlines in 2006 for his Hornsleth Village Project, which involved exchanging pigs and goats with 300 residents of a Ugandan village in exchange for changing their name to Hornsleth with the slogan, "We want to help you, but we want to own you."

This project goes with the tag line "There is no product, there is only marketing". Indeed, there is no art as such for sale as the 5x5x5m chemically enhanced steel sculpture, which will resemble something like a supernova and encapsulate 5,000 samples of DNA, is intended to be dropped at 12 55' 25" N / 166 11' 59" E (between Japan and the Philippines) in November next year.

You might ask, what's the point of making a sculpture no one will be able to see? Well, the answer is simply conceptual art is the art of ideas - not objects - or, as Hornsleth puts it, "intellectual merchandising".

"I want to make a monument to humanity. In this world there is a lot of thinking about high places like Everest and outer space, but not low, so I wanted to do something downward, with connotations of being deep not only physically and geographically, but mentally as well," said Hornsleth, speaking on Saturday night at Gallery Soulflower at the first of two scheduled live events.

"This project is about eternal life on both a scientific and poetic level. I want the people who donate their blood to have a relationship with the sculpture that is lasting. They will always know that they have a part of themselves in the deepest, darkest, furthest possible place on Earth it could be. It's possible that sometime in the future the sculpture could be returned to the surface and the DNA inside used to recreate the donors as new human beings," he said.

"Another aspect of the project is we are collecting stuff, not distributing it as artists normally would. This is a simulation of scientific research and how scientists research and exhibit," he added.

Of course, when selling ideas and not objects it makes it more difficult for a post-modern conceptual artist such as Hornsleth to make a living. To overcome this economic hurdle, Hornsleth markets posters he defaces with his trademark "paint ball" technique of confused colours and "Hornsleth" signature that he emblazons across the middle.

These posters usually sell in Denmark for 5,000 (229,000 baht), with one larger poster selling for a record price of 150,000 (6.85 million baht). However, the artist has adjusted the price to suit the circumstances here, where he is not yet well known. Also, only 1,000 of the 5,000 donors having their blood dropped to the depths will receive a certificate signed by the artist for free - everybody else has to pay $1,000 (36,100 baht).

Not bad for an idea.

Later, sculptures and bronze models of the 5m sculpture will also be for sale.

"Really, the idea of all my work is to hold a mirror up to people. I'm a provocateur, but I'm not mocking. My point is that now society has become a "Dictatorship of the Consumer". The consumer decides everything and has the power to change the world - to stop war, to stop famine, to stop all the social evils, but the consumer doesn't use that power," said Hornsleth.

This conceptualist has begun his own branch of post-modern art he calls "Futilism", which deals with the frustrations of our time and is complete with its own manifesto, the Futilist Manifest. The introduction reads, "Art is art when it's not art. As soon as it's defined as art it's dead."

In the first line he writes, "Futilism is the philosophy of opening doors to the hidden, to the illicit, and to what is beyond the obscure, the rational and apparently meaningful aspects of culture."

Bangkokian blood will continue to flow tonight between 5 and 8pm at Gallery Soulflower, Silom Galleria. But with only 50 of the 100 free contributors allocated to Thailand in the project remaining, you had better be early if you wish to avoid paying in more than blood to have a part of you sunk to the bottom of the sea - not to mention achieving immortality.

If you're concerned that Kristian von Hornsleth's invitation for you to make art with your own ichor is not fine art, don't worry; just follow one of the maxims brazenly displayed on an earlier painting that reads, "Don't Worry This Is Art", which, because it isn't, is. Or is it?

The second stage of 'Deep Storage Art Project' will be held tonight between 5 and 8pm at Gallery Soulflower, 309 Silom Galleria. Call 02-630-0032 or visit http://www.gallerysoulflower.com/.

DEEP STORAGE ART PROJECT

DEEP STORAGE ART PROJECT
Live forever! Let me put your blood in the Marina Trench

Kristian von Hornsleth
DENMARK

Gallery Soulflower is delighted to announce an ambitious and provocative project by KRISTIAN VON HORNSLETH, the artist from Denmark. Gallery Soulflower, Basement Level, Silom Galleria, Bangkok

Live Event for one day only Please join us for cocktails Saturday, 7 March 2009, from 6.30pm
RSVP: Ms. Oui +662 630 0032

The artist will be present along with a live television team from Denmark, who will document the whole process.

GIVE YOUR BLOOD AND LIVE FOREVER WITH HORNSLETH Kristian von Hornsleth’s upcoming project "Deep Storage Project", will give all Hornsleth-lovers the opportunity to live forever.

In November 2009 a gigantic sculpture with the measures 5 x 5 x 5 meter will be put down into the 11 kilometer deep Marianer grave, between Japan and The Philippines.
The sculpture, which is being made in a special resistant shape, will contain thousands of DNA samples from declared Hornsleth-lovers.
The artwork Deep Storage takes place in the idea of re-production and eternal life. Imaging that this sculpture is found by creatures of the future and that the DNA samples will be used to create new human beings.
What connects these people, and what are the criteria of selection? Another important element in Deep Storage is the impact it will have on the participants. Some of them are lying there in the scariest, dark and far away from home places in the world. Somewhere between the bottom of the sea the DNA will exist and that can become a constant source of disturbia, thoughtfulness and mind confusing for the participants.



THIS IS HOW IT WORKS
1. Give a drop-sample of one's blood to be saved in the Deep Storage Project.
2. Sign and put another drop of your blood on a Deep Storage declaration.
3. The Declarations are signed and numbered by Hornsleth
4. The declarations are art pieces for the donor.
5. Each declaration can either be a paper certificate for free or a painting at various prices.

Hornsleth is collecting blood
By art historian Wolf-Günther Thiel
What does it mean when artists begin to define themselves by collecting objects, rather than creating them? Artists simulate scientific research by exhibiting things they have gathered, categorized, documented, counted, archived, stacked and stored by analogical thinking as Michel Foucault puts it. Others are documenting, counting, and archiving aspects of their lives and making objects that record these processes. Kristian von Hornsleth plays on this idea and deconstructs it by mystification of the act of archiving as well as storing the archives. The idea is to create a story like Homers Ellias and make people part of that story which people may tell in the future to understand our times from a future perspective. Hornsleth claims the position of an artist as an "Übermensch". Kristian von Hornsleth is collecting blood and DNA of people who are dedicated Hornsleth art lovers. In earlier times of civilization we would call it a tribal ritus in order to manifest their existence in a far away mythological future: A tribal ritus of the Hornsleth tribe. Hornsleth himself as the schamane of his own people conserves their cultural existence. His artistic act is a synonym for the cave paintings, which show tribal hunting scenes in the pre-historical times of human existence. The wish is the documentation of existence as deep storage of DNA as part of the individual blood proof. The technological believe in progressive natural sciences evokes the idea of another cycle of existence in a far away future. The believe is that future science can evoke the today human individual through their DNA. Hornsleth himself speaks of this possibility of a second existence. Earlier civilizations would have respected an approach like this as "übermenschlich". Friedrich Nietzsche, the german philosopher. wrote 1883 the book: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The book's protagonist, Zarathustra, contends that "man is something which ought to be overcome:"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man?" Übermensch: The German prefix über can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is appended. Mensch refers to members of the human species, rather than to men specifically. The adjective übermenschlich means beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity. Zarathustra first announces the Übermensch as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings. The modern idea of all men are created equal and the base of modern idea of democratic rights are clearly contradicted by Nietzsches approach. Another aspect of Nietzsches concepts is of importance to the understanding of Hornsleths "deep storage" project: The eternal recurrence of the same. We like to understand this concept like this: The eternal recurrence replaces the Übermensch as the object of serious aspiration. The Übermensch lies in the future — no historical figures have ever been Übermenschen — and so still represents a sort of eschatological redemption in some future time. This promise of being part of this future time and existence is the promise Hornsleth suggests. The Übermensch of this future times is to create new values, untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Hornsleth and his own created mystical mythology hints clearly at Nietzsches concepts and suggests a way out of the contemporary disasters of modern times and their human individuals. As long as you believe in Hornsleth you believe in a future and in a human value systems. This will be documented or monumented through the "deep storage project." It will be stored at one of the deepest place on earth the "marianer grave". At the same time as it is a sign for "memento mori" it is a sign for future believes in individual existences.