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blue haze
by Catsou Roberts
As a site, as well
as a social phenomena, Christiania is by turns seductive and repellent.
Three decades after its inception, Christiania continues to offers
itself up as a tangle of contradictions. Many visitors to the self-proclaimed
autonomous territory would find it impossible to conclusively pronounce
the social experiment either a success or a complete failure. Anyone
sympathetic with the original Utopian drive behind the community
will fervently seek evidence of a better, happier (more utopic)
existence afforded by the “alternative” lifestyle. So,
never mind the expansive piles of detritus which greet the visitor
at the entrance to Christiania. Never mind the filthy, grotesquely
malformed dogs (an incestuous “breed” unique to the territory)
inclined to rub up against you, because a little further on there
are grassy foot paths, well-tended gardens and quaint cottages.
With this mind set, strolling through Christiania requires a continual
visual reframing, as if using an eighteenth century Claude glass
to delineate a particularly pleasant view. One would need to block
out the ubiquitous decay which threatens to impinge on precious
passages of the picturesque. This, in order to sustain the illusion
of a triumphant Christiania (as one might, at Disneyland, say, avoid
looking too closely for fear of recognizing a human face peering
through the head of Mickey Mouse). But this way of looking at a
place, in squared off images, necessarily implies a fracturing and
fragmentation of the site’s reality. It is to see fluid reality
as a series of freeze frames. While Joachim Koester has no interest
in presenting an idealized vision of Christiania (scores of documentary
films and reportages about the community have seen to that) he offers
a version of the territory that, similarly, is composed of images
that patch together an alternate “version”. Koester’s
photographic installation Day for Night, Christiania present a sketchy
panorama of the site. The titles which he attributes to each individual
photograph in the series reflect the multiple “realities”
possible in regard to Christiania: these are dyadic titles that
make simultaneous reference to Christiania’s former identity
as a 17th century military base and to its later reincarnation as
a squatters’ community in the 1970s. Titles such as The Milkyway/Officer’s
Quarters, Pusherstreet/Canteen (no.2), Lotus House/The Copper Mill,
or Peace Ark/Barracks reveal the dual identity of certain areas
that retain traces of their previous function, despite having been
rechristened with appropriately utopic-sounding names. Koester’s
images reveal that rather than obliterating the earlier structures,
the new inhabitants of Christiania recycled the buildings and merely
grafted any needed additions onto the existing architecture. Throughout
the photographs, we see evidence of jerrybuilt structures clinging
to fortified building walls like cancerous growths. These precarious
structures - balconies, patios, and kiosks - contribute, like everything
else at Christiania, to the sense of simultaneous decay and redevelopment.
Fixed in a state of arrested development, the community is never-the-less
continuously transforming. The force of entropy is evident in the
endless examples of forsaken building projects, and often it is
unclear whether or not these were demolition jobs, or whether the
very building materials intended for construction have deteriorated
from neglect. The Infohouse/Gym, for example, features the community’s
signature building adorned with a grandiose mural showing the likes
of Christ, Budda, and an inuit figure gazing out from an earthly
paradise. Before these luminaries sits an enormous heap of plaster
board and plywood which seem to have taken root at the building’s
entrance. Elsewhere, the prevalence of tents, makeshift shacks,
and shelters converted from rusty vans - objects usually associated
with mobility and impermanence - emphasize a state of suspension.
However, these scenarios are perceived through a misty blue haze.
Blue, the color of the artificial reality world glowing at night
from your neighbor’s television while delivering a regular
mix of fiction and information (as well as the now ubiquitous docu-drama),
is also the color of moonlight. Koester’s views of Christiania,
photographed through bluish filters, replicate the “day for
night” cinematic technique. The effect achieved by cinematographers
was intended to simulate night time, allowing evening scenes to
be filmed during daylight hours. This phony crepescule atmosphere
- as only Hollywood could invent - is known in French as la Nuit
américaine, and it is the central metaphor in Truffaut’s
“behind the scenes” film of the same name. Such cinematic
illusionism is an apt device for Koester who seeks to render a fictionalized
version of Christiania. By convention, blue signals mystery and
romance, and here, it has the effect of abstracting these strangely
unpopulated image, and imparting a sense of distance and dislocation
for the viewer. By framing out various views, the artist directs
the viewer’s attention to certain details which may, or may
not be, inconsequential to some yet-to-be articulated narrative.
In one image, a leafy park-like area seems to harbor evidence of
foul play. The spectator attempts to peer closer and closer into
the folds of dappled light, trying to arrive at some “truth”
contained within the image. As is the case with most of Koester’s
work, what is paramount is the descriptive process itself - the
way in which something (a place, an event) is recounted, how it
is narrated. Recognizing that any description or account is necessarily
interpretive, and therefore not comprised of “objective fact”,
Koester uses the conventional medium of “documentation”
(photography) to dramatize Christiania. And, given the various and
conflicting accounts of the territory’s recent history, Christiania
is especially susceptible to such treatment. While the supposedly
“official” map posted at Christiania’s main entrance
lists houses, buildings, areas, and streets by name, long-time residents
often disagree with many of these indications. Everyone, it seems,
has their own version of Christiania. Koester’s own “version”
is recounted not only in the individual images that make up Day
for Night, Christiania, but in the configuration of the works, where
space becomes decisively narrative. The installation alternates
between images of architectural forms and views of stairs, passages
and pathways, approximating the actual spatial relationship between
the various areas of the territory. The rhythm of alternation which
Koester has established between structures and interstitial spaces
corresponds to the contradictory picture which Christiania projects:
it is at once a cramped, occupied site with instances of squalor,
and a rural area in the heart of Denmark’s capital city. Yet,
whether experienced in living color, or through the blue haze of
Koester’s installation, these leafy paths, however seductive
they might be, invariably lead to nowhere. In Koester’s work
these dead-ends are pictorial devices that pull the viewer into
the images, intended - as one could only expect from Koester’s
subtle humor - to lead the viewer up the proverbial “garden
path”.
Originally published
in Day for Night, Christiania 1996, ISBN 87-987060-0-4. Published
by Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen
Catsou Roberts is
a curator and writer. Lives and works in London.
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