Lars Laumann: Berlinmuren
J: Are you telling me I should come out of the closet now Mr. Ron?
R: No, my son! You must go into THE CLOSET.
J: Eh?
R: If you want an appliance to love you you'll have to go in there 'n get you one!
So begins act two of Frank Zappa’s Rock-opera Joe’s Garage, in which Joe visits The Closet (a downtown nightclub), meets a vacuum cleaner called Sy Borg, and ends up accidentally short circuiting him and his room-mate in a three way appliance orgy.
The dada absurdity of Joe’s Garage is predicated on the assumption that most people find the idea of sex with objects at least comically deviant. If we stretch that assumption to include love and even marriage to objects, then we have the foundation for Lars Laumann’s short film Berlinmuren (2008), recently shown at Nottingham Contemporary.
The film follows Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, a self- confessed ‘objectum sexual’ and wife to the Berlin wall. Berliner-Mauer tells us what it means to love objects and how she sees it as an orientation rather than a fetish. Half way through the film we are introduced to Erika Eiffel, who in a bizarre ménage-a-trios claims affection for the very same landmark. The two met on Berliner-Mauer's website but quickly discovered that they are actually in love with different aspects of the wall. Berliner-Mauer loves it as it was (pre 1989), and Eiffel loves it as it is now. In this way their relationships happily co-exist.
The theoretical basis for objectum sexuality is animism. The belief that not only humans, but animals, objects and sometimes even words can have a soul is a feature of many indigenous religions such as Hindhuism and Shinto. It is also one of anthropology’s earliest classificatory tools, closely related to totemism. When considering landmarks such as the Berlin wall and the Eiffel tower, it’s hard not to see the real theoretical base of objectum sexuality as a conflation of the two. Berliner-Mauer however explains that objectum sexuality is not restricted to love between humans and landmark objects. For many Objectum Sexuals it is considered undesirable to love an object that is shared with so many. While readily available information and a certain cultural aura provide opportunities for a deeper connection, distance from the object can pose problems similar to those caused by a long distance relationship. This challenge is often overcome by building a scale model of the object, 'similar to people carrying photographs or articles such as jewellery to remind of their distant lover'.
It is no surprise that the first publication to run with Berliner-Mauer's story was Bizarre Magazine back in 2007. The article ponders the mechanics of intercourse with objects as diverse as the twin towers and a toy train. Needless to say, it is also quick to exploit the latent humour in the subject. One OS contributor with a particular preference for technical objects explains how "a love affair could very well begin with a broken radiator."
In contrast, Laumann’s approach is predictably neutral. The film avoids humour and its subject is neither questioned nor criticised. The narrator of the film is Berliner-Mauer rather than Laumann, who in a seemingly self-scripted monologue explains her orientation as if were the most natural thing on earth. The editing is unobtrusive and mainly consists of a slideshow of still images taken by Laumann, with some footage of Berlin-Mauer out sledging with a model of her husband. The soundtrack, written by Swedish musician Dan-Ola Persson is suffused with a warm melancholy that does much to suppress the latent humour of the subject.
These elements all bolster the neutrality of Laumann's position which at times seems like a difficult tight-rope to walk. The problem is that he’s not the only one to have walked it. Neutrality seems to be the default position of contemporary art - it's an easy position to defend because it isn't a position at all. In Laumann’s case it’s symptomatic of the ‘art as social anthropology’ approach. His preoccupation with the ‘outskirts of popular culture’ has lead to a familiar situation in which an artist searches far and wide for an interesting or exotic subject, only to flatten it with his neutral gaze. Paris Syndrome, a film by John Menick that investigates the eponymous phenomenon of Japanese Tourists who reach crisis point when they find Paris to be the opposite of what they imagined, operates in a very similar way. One redeeming nuance of Laumann’s approach is that at times he seems almost in awe of his subjects, like a strangely besotted fan. In an interview for a Danish website he describes how he became obsessed with Berliner-Mauer's website and how he would check back twice weekly for updates, eventually sating his curiosity by becoming a full member of the group.
In my opinion, Berlinmuren is at its most successful when this fandom mutates into something more poetic. The film's stirring finale comes when Berliner-Mauer laments the damage caused to her husband by a 'violent mob', speaking out against David Hasselhoff for his contribution to the wall’s demise. 'Shame on you David Hasselhoff – you are nothing without that talking car’. The film plays out with slow motion footage of the seminal concert at Brandenburg gate, the fairy lights on Hasselhoff's jacket like flashing firecrackers, his lips silently voicing the song's refrain, 'I've been looking for freedom' - a paean to the popular culture that struggles to understand its periphery, however absurd.
