Hotel Marienbad 009: Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp
Cold Turkey - An Invitation

Hotel Marienbad 009
Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp
Cold Turkey - An Invitation
01. - 30.04.2010

The project Cold Turkey - An Invitation—conceptualized for the Hotel Marienbad by Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp—is both an invitation and an offer. The consumption of drugs takes place in a societal grey area, which in the art world is traditionally valued as something between a Dionysian deterritorialization and the artistic removal of taboos. Underscored by an iconography of inebriation and framed by the myth of Dionysian celebrations, the destructive element of drug consumption becomes easily eclipsed.
The invitation implies the genuine offer to undertake a detox with medical attendance. The hotel room as a place of anonymity and comfort is the starting point. The Hotel Marienbad functions as a heterotopic space and remains a metaphor for an event that eludes any representation.
Medical and therapeutic attendance will be provided by the hospital Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe, Berlin.

The participant of Cold Turkey on the project at frieze Blog

Between 1998 and 2005,  Benjamin Blanke, born in Karlsruhe in 1973, studied at the Federal Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and the University of the Arts Bremen. He lives and works in Berlin.

Between 1998 and 2005, Claudia Kapp, born in Freiburg in 1974, studied at the University of the Arts Bremen and the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Den Haag. She lives and works in Berlin.

Hotel Marienbad is supported by the Friends of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.