Interview: Colonel

Colonel: Prostest demonstration, 2006.

Can you tell what you are doing at Roskilde Festival?

I am extracting people opinions and exhibiting them in the form of a Protest March. All opinions are mixed in the same March. The festival people decide what they want to protest about, but we encourage them to expressabout actual topics. It is a continuation (but different) of the Emergency Room project . Today is today / contemporary is contemporary .

Democracy is a very fast car people have to learn driving. The protest project is to break also the loneliness in front of the media. Instead of consuming news alone people have a chance to be talking about their opinions, they also have to make an effort to express choose a slogan, make a song about that slogan, march for it. If they don’ t make up their opinion somebody will do it for them. I am also deeply interest in collecting what the youth of Denmark end of June 2006 think about the actual situation.

The protest march is just a form, a moving form following the statements

from my manifeste from 1989.

Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006.

We go around in the festival camping (where they drink before the concert) to encouraged them to make a headband with a formulate opinion. If 10 persons share their slogans on headbands we make them do a flag with that slogan. Eventually an image from the media of the day is added on the flag. It become a community of opinion. It happens that people try to convince other people to adhere to their slogan so they go around exposing their ideas about Messerschmidt (DF) at Roskilde festival or Geneva Convention or Montsanto genetic project. Instead of saying skååååål to speak to each other, they talk about their vision, their fears.

Like in Emergency Room (done with Frank Franzen ed.) we encourage them to express about today-today (we circulate news paper as inspiration). For example a news paper of that day was making a story about spin doctors so came the slogan from a 12 people group "spindoctory is not democracy " .

It is a de -isolation project an opinion moving fitness centre + a mobile exhibition changing it's content and it s form every minutes (people come in and and out the group with different opinions all the time). Extracting-exhibiting is like breathing for me.

We don't serve soups, we try to extract and recommunicate, give a form to what is extracted, there is a circulation of ideas . I will do also an exctraction-distribution format at the next Venice Biennialle in a different form but in the same gymnastic of transport ("Biennalists" with support from Kunstrådet).

A March is composed by different opinions. People come in and out the march as we march the content of the march changes all the time as people enter the march with new slogans and other leaves the march. One slogan inspired the next one

Everything mix in an harmonic chaos of opinions being exposed. I try to give a kind of poesie to the protest march. I become a "demonstration scenograf" once the march has started (after I analyse the collection, before I stimulate and extract)

My assistant collect also the mobile phone numbers of the protesters; so once a day , people that have registered by phone receive a meeting sms for a protesting flash mob.

Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006. Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006. Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006.

Ok... and you make documentary about the project, or is it just here and now?

I am a mad documenteur. I integrate everything that moves in my art work. Most of my performance have 2 speed level "here and now" like you say and then I am exhibiting the collected materiel, giving it a new form. At the festival I had a very professional photo and camera crew + a writer to work all the time. Everything which is said or shown is precious to me. I am not an entertainer, I build monuments made of collected data. The data will be interconnected in a new form. I can make a film for example about what do the young think while the country is in a war. It is an interesting topic "measurement of awareness" (even understanding art needs awareness...). This project is also in dialogue with a project I start to make for dokumenta. Like in Emergency Room something is exhibited the very same da but after it goes in the "Retard" domain. The pleasure to be a father will hopefully turn into the pleasure of being a grandfather...

Some of the collected materiel from the Roskilde will also goes in my exhibition at Olaf Stueber Gallery in Berlin september 2006.

Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006.

Do you feel artists in general is lacking interest in everyday newstopics?

Artists (if we have such category) are of course touched and concerned with everyday news topics. Most artists are sensitive as well about mass murdering, transformation of the gene, ecological problems, laws on terror and asylbørn, control of DR by DF, Guantanamo, indian kids dying in danish factories etc... of course of course - just to name what I saw in the news today. The problem does not come from artists, the problem is just that they don't have a structure to express about those things immediately, when things can be changed. If they are not street- or activist-artists they just don't have a space to express. The lack of expression about today-today is only because the art structure is keeping some old rituals. The bureaucracy of contemporary art... Also the stupid rituals, vernissage for example. The institutions is frozen in 3 years agenda, some kind of immobility is the result of that.

Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006.

Emergency Room propose a new structure, new rituals, new organisation etc... that why, with Frank Franzen, we open Emergency Rooms in different towns. I will say to answer your question that artists, as actual category, are good abstract painters, if you insist in me being provocative, and artists are busy. Most don't have more space to integrate new elements, they are always truly busy with building an exhibition planed 3 years ago: they have projects, they are swimming deep in their thoughts. Artists are busy and this is sad for everybody.

Did you see (hear) an artist opinion about Montsanto having a foot in Denmark ? Personally I did not, even so this is about live-death and other themes; copyright, corruption... more or less concerning artist, abstract or not. Artist ARE specialists in visual art, communication etc.... they should be consulted on all topics and also about today, because they have a very interesting opinion and vision I'm sure, and I am burning to know what they think about today-today... •

Colonel: Protest demonstration, 2006.

• manifest moving exhibition:

• Galerie Olaf Stüber, Berlin and Colonel received a grand from Kunstrådet to open an Emergency Room in New York