Weltuntergang & Prinzip Hoffnung

The exhibition Weltuntergang und Prinzip Hoffnung opened three weeks after August 11, 1999, for which day Nostradamus had predicted the end of the world. At the same time, this was shortly before the turn of the millennium, when the ‘digital’ apocalypse was feared. The theme was, therefore, timely. It was taken in hand by Harald Szeemann, who had been ‘permanent free associate’ of the Kunsthaus for sixteen years. The two authors of a book about the apocalypse had suggested this totally unlimited topic to the curator known as a kaleidoscopic total art worker. Szeemann insisted on including the principle of hope as well. The show began brilliantly in the large exhibition hall with a copy of Géricault’s ‘The Raft of the Medusa’. It continued, for example, with election posters for Adolf Hitler, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and works by contemporary artists, such as Katharina Sieverding, Bruce Nauman and Thomas Hirschhorn, the whole thing accompanied by pop music and a lavish film program. Hirschhorn reported on global problems, using twenty blackboards (‘One artwork, one problem’). Why he took up so much space cannot be determined from today’s point of view. Also exhibited, in the graphic cabinet, were representations of the apocalypse from many centuries. For the theme of ‘Hope’ works from the in-house collection like Joseph Beuys’s ‘Olivestones’ were just what Szeeman needed (1984), even though the connection seemed somewhat talked up. In the cases of Rudolf Steiner and Emma Kunz it was really a matter of hope, even though exoterically misted. But whether the kitschy-trashy duo of Eva & Adele really transmitted a hopeful accent is more than doubtful. The response in the media was very mixed. The Basellandschaftliche Zeitung found that visitors were left alone to cope with the flood of material, and Matthias Frehner complained that the exhibition merely touched on the theme; ‘It explains nothing, it offers no guidance, its structure is not systematically comparative’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Even Mireille Descombes described the theme as very interesting but its realization as unsuccessful (L’Hébdo). Konrad Tobler, however, judged in the Berner Zeitung: ‘In this way the end of the world, even though it makes you dizzy, is lots of fun.’ The exhibition was accompanied not only by a booklet with a text by Michael Butor but also by a publication in the Offizin Verlag. It was edited by the authors Ernst Halter and Martin Müller, who had suggested the exhibition. It sketches the theme of apocalypse in literature and music, in the ideas of sects and in witnesses’ reports about Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden.