"BLUECOAST OFFICE COLOGNE"

installation - sculptures - prints - video
august 2008

download the catalogue folder from the exhibition in cologne as PDF File in german and english HERE

The artpiece "BLUECOAST OFFICE COLOGNE" is a complex installation which consists of diffrent artpieces such as skulptures, prints, and videos, but also collected material, like books, furniture, found footage video, diagrams and so on, some of them are resampled.

On the following page i try to give an impression how the total installation, but also how all the little details of the work looked like. I hope I can give you an idea what this work is about.

BLUECOAST stands for secure investments in the future.
The company made its mission to confront contemporary pessimism and look at things from a different perspective. With this in mind, BLUECOAST invests in the real estate of future costal regions – and with wise foresight builds houses there today with an ambience of a special kind. The project manager explains: “Your planet will become bluer” – meaning the blue of increasing sea levels connected to global warming. The company builds on positive effects of upcoming climate change, which it actively helps to create. “We are a company that surfs on the waves of change that makes others drown”. The Earth’s dynamic climate is a great opportunity. The shorelines of the world are today’s most desired real estate investments. Convinced that this trend will remain strong, BLUECOAST offers residences today right on the coastlines of tomorrow, 70 meters above sea level. This contemporary-style housing development, with its docks jutting out into the air, look a bit exotic on the mountain hills now, but they offer an excellent prognosis of how the coastline will look in the future. Please contact: www.bluecoast.de.vu

Oliver Kunkel’s imaginary company BLUECOAST intimates an idyllic landscape. According to expert calculations, we can expect a rise of the sea level of 70 meters due of the melting of both the polar caps and Greenland’s ice. The frightening results will be the flooding of large regions and the disappearance of whole countries, such as the Netherlands and Bangladesh (already by a sea-level increase of a seemingly insignificant 10 meters), or the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. Dramatically large parts of Germany would disappear underwater with a 70-meter sea-level increase. All cities adjunctive to the Rhine would drown. The whole area on the river’s left bank would turn into a bay into which it would empty, near Koblenz. Except for some little islands, Berlin would be extinct. The metropolis of Hamburg would be hit first: Already at a sea-level increase of 15 meters it would be completely flooded. No one can say for sure when this will happen and what causes polar ice to melt: Is it us or is it the natural cycle of the recurrent ice age? But this is not really important for the point of Oliver Kunkel´s project. This work – like most of his works – does not want to educate; rather, it wants to analyze and offer metaphors that can be applied to other parts of life. Kunkel is more overarchingly interested in psychological issues than in specifically staged or imitative scenarios. For newtalents 2008, Oliver Kunkel was able to install the BLUECOAST OFFICE temporarily within the space of Pandion, a company that specializes in real estate project development. With this, the host company has displayed not only courage and self-confidence, but also significant open-mindedness. Without doubt Kunkel’s project is both provocative and polarizing. His sarcasm is not to be outdone; he offers real estate to solvent clients who want to take fiscal advantage of a looming global catastrophe. But his project is not that of a finger-waver warning us of global climate change. These kinds of appeals have indeed lost their effect on public perception. In July 2008, for example, major print media mentioned as an aside that the North Pole could be without ice for the first time ever this summer. Kunkel´s sarcasm is therefore much more drastic – but also humorous. In a comfortable office ambience he offers the opportunity of acquiring the fictitious real estate. The interested visitor is first fascinated, maybe laughs about the boat in one of the images that hangs over a dock, waiting for the coming water. But then this realisation turns nightmarish. The combination of climate catastrophe and the global sell-off is exhilarating in an absurd kind of way. Oliver Kunkel understands brilliantly how to visualize his ideas, and to offer the viewer an extremely complex experience.