M HKA gaat digitaal

Met M HKA Ensembles zetten we onze eerste échte stappen in het digitale landschap. Ons doel is met behulp van nieuwe media de kunstwerken nog beter te kaderen dan we tot nu toe hebben kunnen doen.

We geven momenteel prioriteit aan smartphones en tablets, m.a.w. de in-museum-ervaring. Maar we zijn evenzeer hard aan het werk aan een veelzijdige desktop-versie. Tot het zover is vind je hier deze tussenversie.

M HKA goes digital

Embracing the possibilities of new media, M HKA is making a particular effort to share its knowledge and give art the framework it deserves.

We are currently focusing on the experience in the museum with this application for smartphones and tablets. In the future this will also lead to a versatile desktop version, which is now still in its construction phase.

The Cocka Hola Company - Skandinavische Misanthropie I, 2005

Book, 18.6 x 11.7 cm, 461 p, language: German, publisher: München: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, ISBN: 978-3453400528.

©image: M HKA

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2024/680).

Literary synopsis

The debut novel of Norwegian writer Matias Faldbakken is a contemporary satire to end all satires. The Cocka Hola Company (first novel of the series Scandinavian Misanthropy Trilogy) is the ferociously funny chronicle of a war against the welfare society and its underlying values. Relying on most people’s inherent hypocrisy and double standards, Simpel and his band of social misfits to stage a series of equally amusing and revealing assaults on middle-class norms. Not since the early sixties has the clown-mask been used to spit out such bitter truths about the human condition in modern-day Western civilisation.

Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice

Scandinavian Misanthropy Trilogy’s protagonists struggle with postmillennial phenomena such as the ‘coffee-tableization of everything’ or the idea of the ‘survival of the hippest,’ and an unhealthy amount of hatred for everything around them. This vicious circle of the subversive – each critique in the cultural field being not only immediately absorbed but also turned into a cultural good, and therefore soon tuning into the mainstream – is also part of his topoi as a visual artist. His non-literary works also deal with the chasm between mainstream and underground, independence and commerciality, and the possibilities of an intervention of the artist and his utopias in the real world.

Add to your list

Artist

> Matias Faldbakken.

Exhibitions & Ensembles

> Exhibition: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ARTWORK BECOMES A NOVEL?. M HKA, Antwerp, 07 December 2012 - 21 April 2013.

> Exhibition: Book Lovers 4.0 (Pop-up Bookstore). De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 28 January 2014 - 02 February 2014.

> Exhibition: The Preparation of the Novel (Book Lovers 5.0). Fabra i Coats - Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 18 July 2014 - 05 September 2014.

> Exhibition: THE BOOK LOVERS - A Project about Artist Novels. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, 25 January 2013 - 09 March 2013.

> Ensemble: The Artist's Novel.