Artist’s Talk with Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen September 25, 5 pm.
Opening September 25, 6-8 pm. The ladies choir The Sweaptaways inaugurates the exhibition at 6 pm.
About the Complaints Choirs…
From a conversation between the Finnish artists, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Tellervo Kalleinen, sprang the ingenious idea of literally creating a complaints choir. In Finnish the expression “valituskuoro” denotes a mass of people complaining simultaneously. The idea was to bring people together who feel the need to complain in a choir where they jointly can sing their complaints out aloud. Since the Complaints Choir project was first launched in Birmingham in 2005 approximately 20 complaints choirs have assembled all over the world – from Bodö, Norway to Melbourne Australia. The interest from prospective choirs has been so massive that the artists have had to put out a manual on their website www.complaintschoir.org in order to help people organise new choirs.
About The Complaints Choir of Sundbyberg…
Marabou Park is joining the worldwide complaints choir movement by creating a local complaints choir – The Complaints Choir of Sundbyberg. Do You feel the need for a more creative outlet of your everyday complaints? Join The Complaints Choir of Sundbyberg! It’s free and no previous experience of singing is required. The rehearsals commence in October with choir leader Sophie Eklöf. The Complaints Choir of Sundbyberg will premiere at the Marabou Park annex located in the former Church of Betlehem in Sundbyberg November 14th. For further information or to sign up for the complaints choir please contact us on ph: +468294590 or write to klaga@marabouparken.se
About the artists…
Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen (lives and works in Helsinki) and Tellervo Kalleinen (lives and works in Helsinki) have, along their individual practices, collaborated since 2003. Apart from the Complaints Choir project they’ve recently launched a project, “I Love My Job”, in Gothenburg where they invite people to make films about “nightmarish situations” that can occur in workplaces. Read more at www.mittjobb.org.
About the exhibition at Marabou Park annex…
At Marabou Park annex a video installation by Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Tellervo Kalleinen will be exhibited featuring complaints choirs from Birmingham (2005), Helsinki (2006), Hamburg (2006), St Petersburg (2006), Chicago (2007) and Singapore (2008). A uniting feature of the initiators of the choirs is the idea that they represent the whiniest nation of all and that people all over the world are united in the most common complaints; the weather and public transport. A general feeling of maltreatment surfaces in the recurrent chorus – “It’s not fair!” On top of that we can detect a unique local layer of what seems to be the collective unconscious of the different nations. Of course the Finnish are more annoyed with bad sauna etiquette than other people. Americans worry that their nation is beginning to resemble one big strip mall. Somebody in the Russian choir claims that he or she can paint the square of Malevitj while drunk! In terms of complaints the most dramatic mix of the severe and the banal are perhaps found in the Complaints Choir of Singapore. Whining about “bad hair days” due to humidity together with complaints about the repressive little city state “Where everything that isn’t expressively permitted is forbidden.” Consequently the Complaints Choir of Singapore was forbidden to perform the day before the concert.