AVL: The Brave New World Re-branded, By Rebecca Geldard

by pmaxwell, 25 July 2008

Atelier Van Lieshout’s ‘SlaveCity’ at Albion, London

"Sanitary unit/ Shower unit/ Work Sleep unit", Slave City, 2005

Joep Van Lieshout’s ‘SlaveCity’ (an ongoing fictional feasibility study into sustainable living) slots perfectly into its current surroundings: Albion gallery situated in the base of UK starchitect Norman Foster’s Ballardian HQ. These real and implied social spaces, positioned one Russian doll inside the other, feel like the comradely components of a larger dystopian architectural universe. Super clean, super functional and super macho.

"5 Star Brothels for Males", Slave City, 2005

And dystopia appears the order of the day in Van Lieshout’s disturbingly efficient, painfully funny alternate reality, described here through ink drawings on canvas and sculptures in a wealth of materials. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing, though, about this collaborative project between the artist-designer and his studio (Atelier Van Lieshout or AVL) is that it’s roots lie in Van Lieshout’s real-life scheme (AVL-Ville 2001) for a free state in his native Holland (which lasted only eight months due to insufficient funds). The inevitable, if not always favourable, cross-over points (AVL-Ville is most memorable as a project for the provision of weaponry) between the two make it difficult to judge the tone and direction of his critical voice.

There’s something fascinatingly bleak about Foster’s architectural vision for the contemporary waterfront. Maybe it’s the lack people, or the inherent weirdness of the city wharf as the last bastion of heavy industry. For this window-punctured bauble could hardly be described as generic, but being in close proximity to a Foster original makes you aware of the dribble-down effect of his particular brand of urbanisation through the capital. Whatever, walking through these eerily quiet spaces, it’s hard not to harbour suspect thoughts about what might be going on behind shiny facades.

Slavecity, 2005-ongoing

Van Lieshout, though, leaves us in no uncertainty as to the goings on within the many impeccably made structures of ‘SlaveCity’. The triple-canvas map, at the door to the main space, provides a gentle initiation to the themes explored and gallows humour of this would-be metropolis’ director. Cartoonish geological divisions order the eye around, such municipal territories as “female brothel” and “museogestor”. It’s ‘The Good Life’ gone bad – self-sufficiency in overdrive – and no-one’s even started eating each other yet. The clinical hangar-like space appears moderately stocked with Van Lieshout and his team’s dark designs for life heavily steeped in the mythology of failed utopian visions and pop-cultural theory.

"Luxurious Female Brothel", Slave City, 2006

The sculptures, on their own, embody a late 1980s design aesthetic (think Keith Haring’s dancing graphic chaps and Jelly Baby humanisation) that make them seem kind of playful until you begin cross-referencing with Van Lieshout’s medieval blueprints lining the walls. I particularly like the “museogestor”, which describes the museum of the future (although if there is anything futuristic about the design of this potential town it’s the kind described in science and religious-cult fiction past) as a bowel-like entity that excretes cultural nuggets. Actually it’s a labyrinthine processing plant – one of several biotech hubs efficiently linking all aspects of the circular ‘SlaveCity’ slog through birth, life and death. The similarly veiny AVL HQ model nearby is the organic yellow of Kiki Smith’s umbilical cords and a puddle of Shih Tzu pee recently deposited on the gallery floor.

"Woman on Bed", Slave City, 2006

Everything has been thought of in this gender segregated ‘Bladerunner’ society for 200,000. There are Mario Botta-style universities, labs for the purposes of breeding and the recycling of body parts no longer in operation. Not to mention the brothels (the deluxe female one is a giant spermatozoa through which the men must fight to receive pleasure in the structure’s ‘head’ – yikes). And what of the people? In Van Lieshout’s hand they appear disconnected and oddly folksy despite the abject nature of some of their acts: as if the graphic characters synonymous with emergency instruction cards and ‘how to’ manuals, have been Pied-Pipered away their various sources into another monochromatic life.

"Female Slave University", Slave City, 2006

There is certainly something refreshing, if at times unpalatable, about Van Lieshout’s reactionary stance – on morality, gender politics, the ‘new’ museum and the cult of modern life – in the context of a fictional project. For he appears unfettered by fine art pomp and the constraints of the design brief. And, possibly by default, the corporate ordering of this fictional society reminds us of the real-life implications for our civil liberties. But as the MD of a new world order? I would be afraid, very afraid.