The legal decorator, the Rose Garden as a battlefield and the looming extinction of the Hitler bug.
‘I don’t want you to be surprised when you see that we redecorated.’
says lawyer Johnnie Cochran to his infamous client O.J. Simpson before a scheduled house visit
by the jury in a double homicide trial that became all about race and status and kept at least half a
continent in a state of anticipation and tension for the better part of 1995.
Originally, Simpson’s house had mostly featured photographs of him with his white golf-buddies
as well as images of his naked, white girlfriend Paula Barbieri, along many other status symbols
on display at his luxurious villa situated in an affluent neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
‘This won’t do at all.’
Simpson’s legal defence team decides to go for something that ‘projects the right image’. So the
country golfers and nude, white women have to go and are replaced by images of unrelated black
children and families, a blow-up of Simpson’s mother, carefully placed African art and Norman
Rockwell’s iconic painting of Ruby Bridges walking to class escorted by US Marshals from 1963,
tellingly titled The Problem We All Live With.
‘It’s on loan from the Cochran collection’ the lawyer jokes.
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Rumour has it that all rose breeds named after Democrat presidents have been removed from
the White House Rose Garden. After all, it was Reagan who in 1986 signed the proclamation
that made the rose the official floral emblem of the United States of America. Nonetheless, the
current design of the Rose garden actually dates back to the Kennedy era. Melania Trump on the
other hand, has decided to keep Michelle Obama’s layout of the Vegetable and Rose garden.
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Being generally accustomed to view roses as positively connotated symbols, be it as a
representation of purity, an expression of love and romanticism or in the function of national
flower it comes with no surprise that roses are also typically used to commemorate or honour
distinguished characters of public life such as politicians, giving rise to varieties such as ‘General
Washington’ or ‘Mister Lincoln’.
Similarly, in 1933 German collector Oscar Scheibel, decides to dedicate a then undocumented
species of a Slovene blind cave beetle to the new Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler.
Anophtalmus Hitleri. ‘The eyeless one of Hitler’ does not go unnoticed by the Führer, who sends
Scheibel a letter showing his gratitude. And while it is not not possible, it is apparently not in line
with taxonomic tradition to change the binomial name of an organism. It is said that the Hitleri
beetle is on the brink of extinction due to trading amongst collectors of Hitler memorabilia or
as the Telegraph put it ‘Nazi fanatics killing off Hitler’s special beetle’. As a result Anophtalmus
Hitleri is now under protection of Slovenian law.
In Everything We Do Today Will Look Heroic in The Future Jasmina Cibic constructs a spatial
setting consisting of three elements, employed to bring our attention to the application and
distribution of Soft Power in such unsuspected areas of our lives as zoological and botanical
taxonomy. The Hitleri bug spreads in form of a wallpaper from a boudoir-like environment
into the space, creating an ‘ornamental rash’ as Cibic calls it but also hosting the artists newest
publication NADA, dedicated to her eponymous film-trilogy, which scrutinised the political
exploitation of successful and failed national icons as well as our complicity as cultural workers
in a system where art, architecture and science become in more or less subtle forms persistent
tools for political power-play. Taking a next step Cibic invited a selected group of scientific
botanical illustrators to imagine how a rose named ‘Nigger Boy’ or ‘Gypsy Rose’ (both existing
breeds from 1931) could possibly look like to inspire such a name and in doing so continues
not only to highlight widespread offensive and racist remnants in culture but possibly also their
easy resurrection in our current climate, because as the welcoming (or is it protecting?) grate
proclaims ‘Everything We Do Today Will Look Heroic in The Future’.
Ornament
Whilst Adolf Loos’ phrase
‘Ornament and Crime’ has become
widespread and close to common
knowledge (and is often misused
as ornament equating crime)
Semper saw a very different
meaning in the existence of
ornaments proclaiming them to be
bearers of long-lost processes in
cultural production and therefore
carrying an important social role
while appealing to emotions rather
than practical matters.
Raumplan
“My architecture is not conceived
by drawings, but by spaces. I
do not draw plans, facades or
sections… For me, the ground
floor, first floor do not exist…
There are only interconnected
continual spaces, rooms, halls,
terraces… Each space needs a
different height… These spaces
are connected so that ascent and
descent are not only unnoticeable,
but at the same time functional”
said Loos about his conception
of architecture before the term
Raumplan was to be coined.
The Grate
As windows often risk entry of
the unwanted they also need
to operate as filters. Possible
intruders ranging from dust,
sand, people, fire, light, air,
animals or undesirable guests.
So for many homeowners the
question arose of how to combine
security without compromising
aesthetics? While John Wesley
Harbert patented his ‘Burglar-
Proof Window Fastenings’ in 1886
, creating a protection that was
durable and ornamental; though
wooden, stone and iron grills can
already be found in ancient Egypt,
the Roman empire or medieval
Scotland.
Built-in furniture
is in a way a Janus-faced
architectural element. While
it allows to further maximise
and adjust available space
than conventional construction
methods do and therefore can
be said to be economical and
sustainable it is also often
connected to rather cost-intensive
design processes of tailor-made
solutions only affordable to
the wealthy classes. With the
popularisation of DIY practices,
more convenient forms of built-in
furniture have reached private and
public quotidian life.
Wallpaper
was embraced by the rising
middle class as a more affordable
substitute for aristocratic
decoration, such as tapestry and
becomes wildly popular in 19th
century Europe. Often imitative
in character it has rather been
associated with kitsch, though
there are notable exceptions
such as William Morris’ massproduced
Blackthorn wallpaper in
1892 and Josef Albers’ Bauhaus
wallpaper which turns out to be
its most popular product. In the
20th and 21st century modernism
minimalism and many of its
successors demand bare walls,
though technology already
invents new uses for wallpaper
such as a signal blocking model
or a wallpaper that functions
as a touchscreen and lets your
Facebook wall materialise.
Courtesy of the artist and Significant Other, Vienna
Photocredit kunst-dokumentation.com