With so much public money being spent on various projects of dubious worth in Hungary, it’s hardly news when one discovers some of it being figuratively flushed down the toilet. But it’s an altogether different thing when you happen on a case involving taxpayers’ money being literally eaten up with nothing to show at the end but actual shit.
The shitty use of public funds in question was an exhibition in Budapest of notorious Belgian art clown Wim Delvoye‘s “installation” piece called Cloaca (yes, it has it’s own website), which turned up at the Ernst Museum in District VI as part of the recent “LOW Festival” highlighting Flemish culture.
Like most big pieces of installation art, Cloaca – the word means the butthole of an animal that craps and wizzes out one opening – is an elaborate mix of the whimsical and the technical. Every day at lunch (we got there just after, alas) someone would have to “feed” the big mechanical monster a meal – apparently supplied by the nearby Két Szerecsen restaurant – which would then be slowly “digested,” leaving behind quite realistic-looking turds (the crap on the conveyor belt in above pic).
Being a piece of conceptual art flushed from the very bowels of the EU cultural/industrial complex, Cloaca naturally comes equipped with lots of predictably fancy-pants, anti-corporate art-speak, which seems to boil down to the idea that the shit machine “has more meaning than a shit machine.”
To which we’d say: No shit. In fact, we reckon this art crap serves as a quite perfect (if, like Cloaca itself, painfully obvious) metaphor for what happens to a lot/most of the money that ends up being gobbled by our government overlords. (And not just in Flanders and the other parts of the EU that generally feed more to the beast than they get to milk; various Hungarian ministries and agencies were also listed as sponsors of the szarógép.)
Worst of all, all those taxes probably ended up getting flushed down the toilet, because according to the Cloaca website, Delvoy has stopped selling his machine shit. On the other hand, since Budapest still dumps much of the raw sewage it creates right back into the river it drinks from, you may have already gotten a nice taste.
That installation has been there from the beginning of february until the 23rd of March and now you are starting to agitate yourself over this? Pretty late don’t you think?
This shitmachine is worth 200 000 US Dollars btw and uses technology developed in several Belgian universities. It is an exact representation of the human digestion system so it is a bit more than what you make of it.
Be objective once in a while, wouldn’t hurt the quality of your posts. If you tried stirring up a storm I think you failed miserably, it’s a shame you put this online only now, Delvoye would have loved your small-minded post, it would have even drawn more people to the exhibition to see what it was all about.
You are obviously missing the point, read a book, stop posting, come back later!
“This shitmachine is worth 200 000 US Dollars btw and uses technology developed in several Belgian universities.” Isn’t life sweet?
Hi Erik,
For ‘bowls of the EU cultural/industrial complex’ I guess you mean ‘bowels’.
But I’m with you on this one. Not just a heap of shit but a shiny techno-dump.
Wonder why Belgians makes so good chocolate and beer…
You only focus on the excriment of this machine, not the natural process which the machine mimixes that goes before it. You would have seen a high end technological machine making this happen.
You obviously went to this exhibition some time ago, your photos are the proof of that. Didn’t you read the plastified hand outs available next to the machine? You would have seen that this machine is actually a critique on our postmodern society focused on consumption. I suggest reading up on this.
You went, you looked but obviously didn’t take it to the next level. Didn’t it occur to you anywhere between leaving the door of Ernszt museum and getting home and typing this blogentree that there is more than just ‘shit’ behind this? Some people go to the bathroom and contemplate things when they take a dump, others read the comics in the newspaper. You obviously did the second, that’s fine but don’t expect me to laugh at your cheap ‘analysis’. You brought the standard of this webpage down, only if it is just a little.
D.W. Since you seem to be taking this so seriously, I’ll cut the wisecracking. First, I actually enjoyed the installation; I am a gizmo-hag, and love all big useless contraptions like this. That said, I found the “philosophy” behind it (the “critique on our postmodern society focused on consumption”) more than a little predictable and, well, unsophisticated. But my main beef is not with the art itself, it’s with the idea of *government* paying for it. Essentially, I lump in art with religion… abstract things that most humans nevertheless value highly/need, but which seem to be best left in the hands of private citizens or groups thereof. Just as I don’t think people should be taxed to pay for church services they don’t want to attend or actively find distasteful, I don’t think people should be taxed for conceptual art they either don’t care about, or similarly find distasteful. (Government grants to maintain old churches and/or museums filled with old master-type are less problematic for me, though still not optimal.) I know this “keep the state out of God and art” view probably puts me in a very small minority in Hungary/Europe, but there you have it. Pedanat: Thx for the proofing; I’ve duly plugged in “bowels.”
I have to say that I don’t agree with your very liberal opinion on what taxes should be used for, but I respect this opinion. Although you don’t make this point sufficiently clear in the actual blogentree. Maybe deliberatly to keep the post as unpoliticized as possible but that can’t be the case as you clearly take a stance against the government being involved in the LOW-festival by providing funding. Before your last post your opinion looked like a cheap critique on conceptual art. Taking a political point of view is tolerable for the majority of the readers here, but I couldn’t make yours out from this raging post until your reaction later on.
The Cloaca installation has more points of view besides being a reaction against our consumption society. Although I read the info provided at the museum I admit I can’t list them because I simply forgot.
Holy crap. I can’t believe anyone could be upset over this. That’s undoubtedly the coolest art installation I’ve ever heard of. Why oh why did I ever leave Budapest?
why oh why is it the coolest art installation? pray enlighten me.
Someone explain why we had to consume 200,000 dollars to teach people about the “critique on our postmodern society focused on consumption”
You had to pay just nothing, this is the current value if you want to buy this artpiece.
If I paid taxes, then those tax funds went into subsidizing your project, then yes, I did pay for part of your shitty machine.
Kudos
You paid for exhibiting it, but not for producing nor buying it!
You ought to be proud, this thing has been all over the world and comes to Budapest and attracts loads of visitors for different reasons.
Sometimes shitmachines can have positive effects where even the state can benefit from…
But hey, that’s just my opinion..
Yes, let’s improve on this technology, then one day we can insert them into robots so that they seem more realistic and the only way we can tell the difference is using dogs. Maybe we could spend cash on an ‘anti-sniffer-dog-detection-unit’ next and have that as an exhibit, that would attract a crowd and make Hungary famous for contributing to the world once again. It’d be up there with Biros and the likes.