Project description

Barbie and Ken

Like "Joseph and Mary," "Adam and Eve," or, simply, "Man and Woman," Barbie and Ken, these two dolls that can be bought in every toy store, have come to stand for the archaic couple in our postindustrial society. Barbie and Ken are role models for our children: tall, blond, skinny, fashionable, flawless. Barbie and Ken embody Health and Normality. Barbie and Ken embody sexless sexuality. It is a sexuality that does not have to question the categories of "male" and "female" and that transcends all ambiguity. "Barbie and Ken are HIV positive." This statement both constitutes a paradox and a parable. The paradox: dolls cannot be infected with HIV. The parable: HIV affects people. "Barbie and Ken" as a metaphor for all people, no matter what class, ethnicity, religion, culture or sexual orientation they belong to.

The objects that have been used in the daily routines of HIV positive tested people and people suffering from AIDS are symbols of contact. "Art is perception, perception is contact, contact is sexuality." This central statement, which has also been realised in various former projects by the artist, serves as the basic idea in "Barbie and Ken are HIV positive." Contact, non-contact, as well as the fear of contact are the main focus in the confrontation with AIDS. The "objects of contact" symbolize the daily confrontation with the illness/the infection. "Harmless" objects ("harmless" in the sense that these objects cannot transmit the virus) become associated with danger and isolation by sealing them into transparent plastic. They are given new meaning as they become polyvalent objects of art.

The objects are sealed in transparent plastic and collected in a folder - body of evidence for various biographies. The objects thus covered can be looked at and touched. The paradoxical precautionary measure of sealing the objects suggests danger where there is no danger. This contradiction becomes a metaphor for isolation. We do not touch cutlery, pens or banknotes. We grasp taboos like the decay of the body, sexuality, and death.

Hundreds of "imperatives of attention" (e.g. "carry me," "shave me," "chain me") are xeroxed on transparent plastic in red font, then cut out and put on the covers. The irritation between the text and the sealed object creates tension.

The plastic covers are labelled with the same green dots that are used in hospitals and prisons to designate infected material and the files of HIV positive tested people. The green dot becomes an everyday object for the persons affected, like the spoon, the pen, the banknote. It is a sign that stands for a general mechanism of signification/stigmatization. The artist deliberately chooses the green dot as a stigma, as the sign used in the city where the artist lives. As a symbol,it stands for a general code that is differently manifested all over the world.

Public Space: Places

To avoid isolating the project in the protected environment of traditional art consumption, the public space serves as a gallery. Shops, restaurants, banks, public buildings, and the media are used as a stage for enacting contact. The green dot on the poster connects the information with the object and becomes an omnipresent signifier.

Public space: internet

A special homepage is installed on the World Wide Web that serves as forum to communicate about the project in progress. The information is continuously documented and updated

Public space: the media

Television: The objects will be displayed in TV studios. Newspapers: Photographs of selected objects will be published with comments by affected persons. The public space pervades the living room via TV and the newspaper.

The signifier of isolation becomes a mass movement.

This project can be worn on one's own skin. The wearers themselves function as parts of the project. The stigma of HIV infection is aestheticized, thematized and thus reintroduced into the everday context.