Cooling Station Party Tent
2022
The Cooling Station Party Tent was displayed for Skovhuset’s summer exhibition, The Great Outdoors, in 2022. Together with five other artists Bigert & Bergström went into dialogue with the surrounding forest area that forms the art space.
Like Party is Over (2020) and Hurricane Party (2022), the Cooling Station Party Tent explores the hangover of the ceaseless consumption capitalism and the borderline between order and chaos. The joyful party tent, made of a colourful greenhouse shade cloth, has been transformed into a cooling station in this piece where visitors can cool themselves with a water misting system.
However, the tent looks about to blast away in any minute. While the Wizard of Oz tornado takes Dorothy to a circusesque world of wonders, B&B’s humorous installation instead blows into a nightmarish ecological and humanitarian catastrophe.
The tent provokes the potentially horrible experience of the wet bulb-35 when a 100% humidified climate meets extensive heatwaves above 35 degrees. The weather phenomena would first take out essential power systems leading to an extensive collapse of the information society. Secondly, the heatwaves would make it impossible for humans to cool down, even unclothed in the shadow. Slowly and painfully, people would die in a way compared to being parboiled alive.
The improvised cooling system and greenhouse cloth can be seen as the never-ending circus of desperate efforts to prevent an ecological weather catastrophe by technological means to keep up with the status quo mentality. To the softly sound of the Party is Over in the wind, the tent becomes a visual symbol that the roaring days of exploitation, consumption, and partying is behind us.
Text by Otto Ruin
"Cooling Station Party Tent," 2022 320 x 250 x 320 cm Greenhouse shade cloth, powder coated steel, polyester, water misting system
Process and production
Photos: Studio Bigert & Bergström
