Since 1999, artists Peter Stoffel and Solvej Dufour Andersen have been running the off-space “planet22” in their home in Geneva’s red-light district, at Rue de Berne 22. With a shop window facing the street, the space invites artists from Switzerland and abroad to stage interventions. In their exhibition at the message salon, Peter Stoffel and Solvej Dufour Andersen are showing an installation with posters of all the artists invited to date: “Our planet is our home, our starting point, the centre of our world. With it, we travel through the world. From it, we venture out into the world, only to retreat back to it. From our planet, we challenge the world, and we flee from the world to our planet.”
Two years ago, planet22 and message salon participated in the “Old Habits Die Hard” project organised by the Berlin art space “Sparwasser”. Curators Heman Chong and Lise Nellemann asked 50 independent art spaces from around the world to provide a favourite art video. This unique art video collection will be installed by planet22 at message salon and will be on display for the first time in Switzerland. message salon is represented with “Brickwall Video” by Selina Trepp, 2003, and planet22 with “Die Bürger von Calais (Die Neptunbrüder)” by Horten, 2000.
Another guest at the planet22 exhibition is Hamburg artist Dirk Meinzer with his Siren Bar: “I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon of muses, which includes the siren, a hybrid creature that occupies a place as an archetype in the mythologies of various cultures. This year, I once again succumbed to the song of the sirens and spent seven months in the Rufiji river delta and mangrove swamps of Tanzania, captivated by my interests. Sirens are seductresses who lure us to the foreign, the unknown, madness, death. I smile at the risk of going to these limits and yet coming home again.”
During the exhibition, Dirk Meinzer will be fermenting his own wine in the Siren Laboratory with objects, videos and music, and at the closing event he will be serving the alcoholic brew for sirens, manatees and mermaids in the Siren Bar. After copious consumption of alcohol, one tends to sing and thus take on the habitus of the siren oneself.