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.

"Cooling Party Station," installation view, The Great Outdoors exhibition, Skovhuset Kunst & Natur, 2022. Photo: Bastian Birk Thuesen
"Cooling Party Station," installation view, The Great Outdoors exhibition, Skovhuset Kunst & Natur, 2022. Photo: Bastian Birk Thuesen
Bigert & Bergström, “Cooling Station Party Tent”. Documentation from The Great Outdoors exhibition, Skovhuset Kunst & Natur, Værløse, Denmark, 11 June - 18 September 2022. Film by Lars Siltberg

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
"Cooling Party Station," installation view, The Great Outdoors exhibition, Skovhuset Kunst & Natur, 2022. Photo: Bastian Birk Thuesen

Process and production

Photos: Studio Bigert & Bergström
Principle drawing
Tent pattern drawing
Greenhouse fabric
Sketch, fabric pattern
Model
Welding the frame
Sewing the tent cover
Assembly in progress