This text is a glammed up remix of three previous texts: Haemmerli: “Gelächter der Dada-Besetzer”,
Gazetta 02/2003, Zurich. Haemmerli: “Wer Grips hat, kauft keine überteuerte Kunst, sondern macht
sie seber.”, SonntagsZeitung, 10/2003, Zurich. And: Haemmerli: exhibition catalogue “Jugend ohne
Anker“, Old Fashion Fine Art. Ed. Thomas Haemmerli, 2008, Zurich.
HOW ONE OF DIVO’S JOKES CREATED A MUSEUM / “Five o’clock, tea is ready!”
by Thomas Haemmerli / 2003 – 2008
The artist and squatter Mark Divo grew up in a British household in the
Anglo-Saxon community of Zurich. Tea remained. Which he serves in whatever house he and his countless artist colleagues are currently squatting.
The scenery in the kitchen reminds of one of a family crafting Christmas
ornaments. Young human children are sitting around the table, intently
scribbling. However, they are all artists, quite stoned and inwardly tilted,
while they are drawing.
This feel of free creativity pervades throughout all the squats, in which
appears the art-combo that Divo has clustered around him. “One of our
principles is that we are not criticising each other’s work”, says Divo. This,
according to Divo, helped even more reserved talents to express them-
selves. To stand in the tradition of Beuys, Divo says that everybody can be
an artist. However, he emphasises that the artist who is living in each and
every one of us will only appear if one keeps on task with discipline and
perseverance.
On the other hand, Divo knows every trick in the book when it co-
mes to leading groups formally free from hierarchy. This man went through
one of the hardest schools of leadership: the left-wing radicals. Divo part-
icipated not only in the battles concerning the Hafenstrasse in Hamburg but
also in the fights of the notorious autonomists movement in Goettingen. He
suffered and argued through ideologic debates, dogmatic discussions and the
whole self-flagellantic insanity, which the pinched sub-cultures of the extre-
me left of the seventies and eighties inflicted on themselves. This toughens
one up. And makes one clever. And sly. And also a little bit manipulative.
CHARISMATIC PERSON, SILVERBACK, GENTLEMAN
In several collectives, Mark Divo often officiated as secret curator, who
admittedly never excluded anybody but who made sure, by means of seg-
mentation of the space (and if necessary an eloquent intervention), that
less talented people weren’t exposing in a too prominent manner. When
approached on the subject of the notorious problems in a group, Divo smi-
les lazily. He says, that he knew the sensitive issues from experience. A
group requires certain homogeneity; emotionally instable characters need-
ed to be kept at bay and that it needed a ban on hard drugs. And a certain
pragmatism.
“Furthermore”, adds Divo, „I became callus during my time at board-
ing school. I shared a dormitory with eight boys. Although I was never
physically strong, my big mouth made a man of me.“ A charismatic person,
what else could be said. And meanwhile qua mercy of the early birth, he is
the undisputed silverback everywhere.
Divo also benefits from his manual skills, which often assign him the
office of caretaker. “I come from a household where the father called the
electrician when a light-bulb needed to be exchanged. This is why it was
challenging to become a handyman.” This he succeeded in. Divo lays wirings, repairs sanitary installations, breaks walls and assembles complicatedly
connected electric effects in his installations. Squatting means: “Sovereign is he
who can fix the toilet.” However his position of caretaker contrasts with his gentle-
manly behaviour. Frequently, he proudly emphasises that not for one single day in
his life he was someone’s employee. And there, where he currently resides, he pre-
ferably employs people to clean and do the garden. Meanwhile he wanders through
antiquarian bookshops, rags shops and flea markets for days and days. As a person
who knows the exact value of furniture, lamps, silverware, bibelots, drawings and
old books, he constantly brings unrecognised treasures into his home.
Still, his life and work in groups is tailor made for him. “Previously I was
even more extreme. We were artist groups who repeatedly changed their names
and where it was very important to smudge who made what, so that critics and art
historians couldn’t build myths and tales.” Later, Divo emphasised the importance
that collectives create synergies, that one can quickly pull something together, that
music, photography, painting can be connected and that it’s never clear if it is a
performance, a party, a bar or an exhibition.
One paragon is the house at Plattenstrasse in Zurich that presented itself as a
large-scale installation, in which different styles created an entity. Especially the
ground floor was a gigantic landscape of art, crammed with knick-knacks, photos,
paintings bought at the flea market, gramophone records, couches and fauteuils.
Between them popesque sculptures by Mickry3, drawings by Ingo Giezendanner
and Divo’s reinterpretations of Géricault or Spitzweg. Here a deer antlers, there
a popcorn jar resembling the World-Trade-Centre with an airplane boring into it,
here an antique-like porcelain figurine, there Granny’s standard lamp, carpets,
cushions and so on and so forth.
Inhabited sculpture Plattenstrasse / Photo: Thomas Haemmerli
A cavernous art-world, so cosy that a mixed bag of Zurich’s Cognoscenti was often
present: from young squatters to artists to intellectuals up to celebrities such as
the filmmaker Daniel Schmid or the pop stars like Yello’s Dieter Meier. This as
well pervades through Divo’s work & action, regardless of whether he is in Zurich,
Prague, Cairo or New York, he always opens a salon that becomes a centre of
gravitation of the city.
Divo loves guests, he is a master of social networking and with his interiors he
always creates the right frame in which interesting people meet and have a good
time. That the bar at time makes some money is part of the pragmatic approach.
INTERIOR AS MOBILE HOME
Concerning all the squats, Divo’s stock supplying the interior, stood for conti-
nual home. If an evacuation was pending, everything was packed up and a new
place was occupied. And when the carpets were barely unrolled, the armchairs
arranged, the deer antlers hanged up, everyone was in familiar surroundings again.
At the time when Divo had an exhibition at the Helmhaus in Zurich, he took a part
of his furnishings along and during the opening night already, the appertaining
kids moved into the familiar living room and made themselves comfortable on the
carpets smoking marijuana-cigarettes and caressing their dogs.
After the evacuation of the Sihlpapierfabrik, the group and the furnishings
lived for three days in front of the Kunsthaus Zurich. Which director indeed was
the bourgeois epaté who tried to end this living-experiment with the assistance
of the police and who didn’t mind sending the squatters an invoice for the clean-
ing costs. The gauntlet was picked up. When drunkenness was advanced, Divo’s
entourage frequently menaced to tar and feather the on-site Rodin.
ACQUIRE, APPROPRIATE, RECYCLE
To vigorously use anything what is just needed, links the squatter’s praxis with
contemporary art taking the shape of appropriation. Latter is key to Divo’s work
both in a broad and narrow context.
The manifest of the group’s Croesus Foundation postulates that inactive va-
lues have to be reactivated, regardless of whether they are vacant houses, trash
or unused ideologies. This often appears to be the appropriation of pretentious
exhibition texts. One text from the Kunsthaus Zurich about Lori Hersberger was
slightly adjusted and recycled for another exhibition. It therewith revealed beyond
doubt to be what it really was: utter bollocks. Utter bollocks that doesn’t describe
anything and doesn’t mean anything and therefore can just as well be used for something completely different.5
The press release for the opening of the museum at
the squatted Plattenstrasse 32, which operated under the name of Häuser & Wir
(houses & us), copied in detail text and graphics of the prestigious gallery Hauser
& Wirth. Even for petitions, Divo enjoys copying without further ado the concepts
of the homepages of some art projects and labelling it with his name.
Thereby the point is to figuratively prune by use of mockery those grand state-
ments of the commercial art scene. “Those who have brains”, Divo said once,
“don’t need to buy overpriced art, but does it oneself. There is a lot that can be
self-made.”
As, at the occasion of the Art Basel, Divo and the writer met all of a sudden a small
booth, which was intended to be for a Czech art review, they assembled it with
their own art and called it “Divo Haemmerli Fine Farts”
Photo: Invitataioncard
for the exhibition Brot im Spiegel in the Kleines Helmhaus, Zürich 2002 with Pastor Leumund,
Ajana Calugar, and Stina Kasser posing in my Dad ́s office
HOW A JOKE CREATED A MUSEUM
The most fateful appropriation was the occupation of a house at Spiegelgasse in Zurich. “The whole thing was a practical joke,“ says Divo in retrospect and guffaws.
“For about a year I knew that the house at Spiegelgasse, in which the Dadaist’s
Cabaret Voltaire started, was vacated. Dada was just a pretence.” Because: “If you
occupy a building that is centrally located, you can’t just get in premises with the
usual punk concert and say: I live here now. You need at least a weekly program,
which gives you press coverage. This creates popularity, attracts the public and
complicates evacuation desires. Even better: one has a real cause.”
For many years, Divo was a traveller in the matter of revolt. This was ter-
minated by – along with narrow-mindedness of the left-winged ideologists – the
awareness that the police force can’t be defeated manu militari. Divo took up to a
more pragmatic worldview and henceforth relied upon PR and charm. Taking the
example of Spiegelgasse, this meant that they called on the audience to save the
valuable Cabaret Voltaire.
Especially cheeky was Divo’s made-up claim that the Cabaret Voltaire will be
converted into a pharmacy, a rumour that was spread via media to all channels
of the city. “Dada’s heritage will be sacrificed to a pharmacy!” Such a statement
triggers a Pawlow-like reflex of resistance in Zurich. The far more important place
of action of the Dadaists, the Café Odeon at Bellevue, was divided in 1970, where
one half became a pharmacy. In the nineties young intellectuals who enjoyed sit-
ting in the Café Odeon with female high-school students started a campaign. The
pharmacy has to go! The Odeon must be restored to its former glory! The prospect
that the Cabaret Voltaire will also become a pharmacy only added insult to injury.
The insurance that was intended to rebuild the building stood no chance against
this rumour.
Besides, Divo relied, according to his textbook, on a culture programme inspired by Dada. His first official act was to notify his buddy from Berlin, the Pastor
Leumund alias Jan Theiler. They knew each other from their time in the squat at
Dunkstrasse in Berlin where Divo lived in a huge room. He broke out the frail ceiling, installed columns and built a pulpit so that it became a sort of chapel. Theiler,
as Pastor Leumund wanted to say mass there and appeared straight away in the guise
of a Santa costume flanked by two dolled-up girls wearing tight tops, white hot pants
and red fuck-me-boots. The two girls held massive candles whilst the pastor made
the audience chant “Ladies!” with a connectable illuminated “Ladies!” panel. Divos
fellow squatters, who felt their privacy was violated and who didn’t like this “artsy-
fartsy crowd”, ended the activities quite abruptly.
ABOUT DELIVERING THE MESSAGE
Divo and Theiler met regularly and worked together in Copenhagen, Genoa and
Zurich’s Wohlgroth Factory. Divo knew that for the purpose of occupying the Ca-
baret Voltaire, Pastor Leumund was the man of the hour. “Jan builds on Dadaist
traditions. During the first night already there was a midnight mass.” Also in Zurich,
Dada-Masses ought to become an attraction. It happened pretty much like that: high
school birds, art-school lovelies, rebellious kids and old art-farts are mounted on
mattresses, squatter-darlings serve tea and a flyer with gospels.
Until the pastor
starts, the curious ones pile up in the staircase. The people on the mattresses move
closer together. The charismatic Leumund conducts and reads and preaches, whilst
his flock had the order to chorus interjections and to belt out a refrain.
The masses were so refreshing that every single member of the ad-hoc-comm-
unity departed as energetic prosyletist to deliver the message “Our mother in flock,
hallowed be thy mane.” (“Mutter unser in der Herde, kein Scheich komme.”)
Part of the activities of the Croesus Foundation were thereafter distributions to
the people, coming in form of coins and small bank notes worth some thousand
franks thrown from the roof of the Dada-House.
This, because they said, they weren’t
able to collect enough money to buy the Cabaret Voltaire from the insurance comp-
any. Therefore they refund the people with the collected assets.
The success of “The-Cabaret-Voltaire-Must-Be-Rescued-From-Its-Pharmacy-
Fate” was overwhelming. The mayor of Zurich attended to the claim. The Swiss
watch company Swatch, always open to unconventional ideas, attributed finan-
cial means. In a national referendum Zurich’s sovereign ruled that the Cabaret Vol-
taire should become a permanent cultural centre. What it became. One with a little
touch of Dada. Sly humour as a charming way of subversion, renunciation of the
seriousness, with which contemporary artists pursue their business as well as the
campaign concerning the Cabaret Voltaire, earned Divo’s entourage the nickname
“Dada-Squatter”. Something that Divo constantly denies: “Dada means everything
and nothing. And nothing is more dead than just running after an art movement.”
Besides Pastor Leumund, Divo only admits one parallel: Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau,
respectively the environments that Schwitter turned into his flats by sheeting trash
and knick-knacks.
TERROR BOMBING WITH ALBERT ANKER
And then Mark Divo gave a proper talking to an artist who is today more present in
Switzerland than the Concretism: Albert Anker. Anker stands for the image of a rural,
idealised and obsolete Switzerland. While, in 1848, the revolutionary liberalism was
creating the most progressive state in Europe, the former student of theology, Albert
Anker celebrated the village-idyll with its polite children, the virtuous mothers, the
righteous peasants and the dignified old. Even the negative characters such as the
shylock, the charlatan, the drunkard with raddled vest and haggard face confirm as
the fallen and the bad Anker’s idyllic small village.
The recourse on this world of peasants and the landsknecht-tradition of rural
mercenaries was applied for the consolidation of its legitimisation by the young fede-
ral state. In the 1930ies, the legend of a rural Switzerland became heart of the spirt-
ual national defence, the Helvetic version of a blood and soil worldview. Down to the
present day, the idea of a rural Switzerland shapes policy. No other marginal group is
represented to such extend. Nobody else is as much pampered as the peasantry. No
other professional group is so often portrayed in documentaries. Nobody is so over-
estimated regarding the identity of Switzerland. Down to the present day, Anker’s
paintings shape the legend of the Helvetic peasantry and a glorified past. Added
to this: the biggest collector of Anker’s work is Christoph Blocher, the leader of the
national conservatisms, who, since 1992 is the loudest and most prominent Swiss
politician. A right-wing populist tribune of the plebs, self-made billionaire and head
of chemical companies, who originally was trained a peasant and therefore embodies
Anker’s spirit: an industrial, internationally connected Switzerland that projects an
image of a righteous, agricultural idyll, far away from the world.
This is where it stings, when Divo brings Anker’s motifs to the 21st century.
Images, which everyone in Switzerland is familiar with are reinterpreted by Divo.
Thereby Divo vigorously respects Anker’s visual language. Anker personalises and
individualises his characters with objects, which make them an office-holder: a knit-
ter, a clerk or a charlatan. Divo replaces these objects and the “Seifenbläser” be-
comes this weed smoking character that represents today’s favourite hobby of the
adolescents. Instead of playing domino, the child in the painting gloomily entitled
“After the Financial Crisis” plays with credit cards. Or the “Little Knitters” (Kleinen
Strickerinnen) become the “Little Blasters”. Anker’s depicted children are Divo’s
“The Little Delinquent”, the “Little Drunkard” or – in the presence of some lines of
coke – “The Youth without Anker”.
Therewith Divo evokes the great angst issues of today: the total financial crash. A
brutalised youth. That drinks. And smokes weed. And uses coke. The omnipresent
menace of people running amok and bomb attacks, which can be felt in every single
forgotten suitcase, as nutcases of all shades currently prefer settling an old score with
explosions.
Divo stays – right up to the antique-like varnish, the gilded frame and the title
bearing metal plate – as close to Anker as possible. This is why his paintings seem a
little ridiculous and therewith refer to – with all due respect for his painting skills –
the purpose of Anker’s characters: they are invariably exaggerated clichés.
THE REFINEMENT OF A GARBAGE BAG
Divo’s last coup also addresses itself to the national trait of the Swiss. And to the
subject of garbage. In order to reduce the amount of garbage, the most places in
Switzerland have a tax on the correct rubbish sacks, like the “Züri-Sack”. Garbage
belongs in the ‘Züri-Sack’ only! You better not throw your garbage into the wrong rub-
bish sack and put latter into the wrong container. For this kind of sinister character,
the city of Zurich employs a kind of garbage-detective who, like a forensic scientist,
investigates improper sacks. And hunt – by looking for the smallest indicator in the
trash – for the sinner who will then be charged a steep fine. The ‘Züri-Sack’, symbol
of a clean, ecological and unified waste management, which is, probably not by mistake, white. Divo had commissioned to make an exact porcelain replica of this very ‘Züri-Sack’.
And this is how this correct rubbish sack, which one hides below the sink and – once
filled – has to be gone for ever, one brings out over and over again, comes back, refined
as object-fetish, into the homes. And hence continues Divo’s path to transform discarded and obsolete objects into art.
CURATOR, SMOOTH OPERATOR, CHARMER
Along with his art, Divo continues to dedicate himself to collective actions. Based in
the vicinity of Prague where he lives with his wife, daughter and dog and where he
conjured the arts centre D.I.V.O.-Institute out of nothing. And as travelling curator who
uses his jam-packed address book and brings together artists from all over the world.
One proven advantage is one further quality of his, one he draws on from all these years
of being a promoter in pauperised sub-cultures: Divo is a smooth operator. He knows
the institution’s soft spots, he knows how to fill in a form and when to blow a little bit
of smoke in order to fork the universal lubricant money out for another such ludicrous
venture.
Photo: In this Picture I quoted a famous photo of dadapapas Hans
Arp, Tristan Tzara, Hans Richter with Pastor Leumund and Räto Jost,and it was used to illustrate a very
readable article in the Magazin written by Michèle Roten
Whereas this success is also in great part due to Divo’s charm. Which is not only
instrumental but also generous and is called into action at any place. Say when he
animated the staff of a retirement home to participate in artistic activities. And invi-
ted them to the Museum Plattenstrasse. These people loved this polite and audacious
bohemian who fabricates curious objects. And they were utterly delighted when at five
o’clock sharp he served them tea.
NAIL AND DISGRACE ANNE FRANK
Divo fits in with this tradition, whereby one of his favourite materials is old books. He constantly drags home bags of books from the flea market and old books shops. This man is well read and he exactly knows when he found yet another jewel. For the rest, he treats old books for what they exactly are: ordinary garbage, with which something new can be created. Thus he draped books on the floor of the Helmhaus in Zurich as a testimonial to minimal-art installations. Again and again he uses the bourgeois libraries as a starting point for his work. The library was one of the most prominent in- struments of social distinction and individual self-representation of the bourgoisie.8 The abundance of back of books proves the familiarity with the canon, testifies sophistication, a rational mind and characterises in its individualised arrangement, clearly visible, the specific preferences as well as the literacy of the man of the house.
Divo caricatured this very library by piling the books in a way that the backs of the books were indeed visible but not one single volume could be extracted.
He then intensified this concept by covering the wall with nailed on books. Since not only the backs of the books but the entire cover will then be visible, what enhances the representation of the single volumes. Consequently the books became completely useless as vessel of pages. Which bestowed the nailing with a disturbing aggressive gesture. Especially when discovering The Diary of Anne Frank next to a novel by Simmel and a political manifesto from yesterday. Ever since the Nazi’s book burning, books have become somehow sacrosanct. Who destroys books gets the reputation of wanting to destroy their spirit, if not also their authors.
This interpretation finishes Divo off: what is nailed on a wall and by this mean exhibited, is the garbage of second-hand shops, the remaining of book-production and information-overkill. Once nailed on a wall the illusion ends that this copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and Simmel’s novel will ever be read again.
Divo’s work sneers at a past instrument of cultural self-representation and displays it as something obsolete. Simultaneously he transfers it to the currently fashionable code-system of the bourgeois class distinction: contemporary art. The nailed on, un- used books become art and come around as components of cultural representation.
Divo’s nailed on library is also to be found in a photographic reinterpretation of classical paintings. The initial point is Spitzweg’s painting “The Bookworm”. The bookworm is standing on a ladder, a little lost, in front of huge bookshelves. In his adaption “The Book Desecrator” (Bücherschänder), Divo is standing on a ladder, ar- med with an ancient wig, and is nailing a book on the wall of his nail-library.
HUMOUR, MOCKERY & ART ROBBERY
Spitzweg and Divo not only have the subject but also a mocking humour in common. With this he robs the entire history of art. In his series “Megamops” he embraces the favourites of the dominating elderly generation of collectors in Zurich, the Concretism and the Constructivism. He arranged colourful, rectangular sponges within a frame, in such a way that they reminded of the geometrical colour-experimentations of C&C. In addition, in order to cuff the stern spirit of Zurich’s Concretism, he had a young naked lady with a worried expression in his photo holding a panel with the slogan “No More Max Bill!” (Nie wieder Max Bill).