Jens Haaning
The work of the Danish artist Jens Haaning revolves around cultural translation techniques and the construction of the ‚own‘ and the ‚foreign‘ in the context of social and psychosocial perception. Here a key aspect is his work with people from diverse social segments who fit into traditional conceptions of everyday life to a limited extent. This can take the form of working with various ethnic groups, setting up an ‚Office for the Exchange of Citizenship‘ at the Vienna Secession in 1997 (where visitors could obtain legal advice regarding a change of citizenship), exhibiting psychotropic substances or creating portraits of psychiatric patients posing as fashion models. Haaning’s work introduces aspects of irrationality into the cultural construct of normality, which put into question routine actions and behavior that conforms to social norms. The work presented here shows the patient Knud in a psychiatric clinic in Copenhagen, who Haaning has visited over the years for conversations regarding his experiences. Without making any issue of Knud’s therapeutic process, which includes treatment with psychopharmaceuticals, the artist outlines this man’s understanding of human existence and its meaning. The text inserted into the image is phrased as if it were an advertising slogan for a pharmaceutical product, and it typifies the level of irritation with which Haaning confronts the beholder. Thus the work Human Life serves as a point of departure for querying life models and their often incalculable effects.
