Hello Society

Bad Beuys Entertainment, Klara Liden, Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Orum, Antonia Low, Kenneth Balfelt, Research and Development

Curated by Hanne Mugaas, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, May 2005

KLARA LIDEN

Klara Liden's work is taking the form of videos, performances or installations, which have in common the use of do-it-yourself strategies, an exuberant energy and a certain form of rebellion. A photographic self-portrait produced in 2004 presents the artist with her tool kit, including pliers, screwdrivers and a flashlight, that she carries in her trench coat. In her previous projects, Liden built a house with discarded materials on the bank of a river in Berlin, set up an alternative free postal service in Stockholm, and performed provocative dances in Stockholm's commuter trains.

BAD BEUYS ENTERTAINMENT

Founded in 1999, at Cergy-Pontoise, in the Parisian suburbs.
The work of Bad Beuys Entertainment stems from and speaks about the outskirts. To live in these outer-urban spaces is to inhabit a certain "culture", with specific reference points, represented by a whole spectrum of outsider activities. Bad Beuys Entertainment works with and around tags, rap, riots, insults, burning cars, suburban underworlds, urban legends, big architectural housing developments, popular culture,
the ubiquity of the television, urbanism, hip-hop and graffiti.

Bad Beuys Entertainment (etymology). The artistic program of the group can be seen through the multi-lingual play of words. BAD BOYS ENTERTAINMENT is the name of a major American hip-hop label. Sean Combs aka Puff Daddy is the founder and producer of this ethnocentric cultural company, which seeks worldwide distribution of a specific kind of music: black, urban and generated by subculture. In Bad Beuys Entertainment, Boys has been replaced by Beuys, the XXth century German artist, who had an original artistic program that he called "social sculpture", that is, he considered social fact as material for creation, a social material he wanted to model and transform by his "actions" and his artistic statements. He clearly aimed to change society.