Bomb Threat Generator
Writing, radio broadcast

During the ‘Becoming Dutch’ symposium at the Vanabbe Museum a pamphlet illustrating fire and anti-terrorist measures was handed out. In it, a flow-chart tells you what to do in case of an emergency. I would have loved to see the security procedures for a bomb threat jolt to a start, simply to see the flow-chart mechanism at work. I set to work on a bomb threat that could be broadcast over museum radio. I devised a series of questions regarding utopias, the answers to which would complete a bomb threat announcement. The word game consists in a template that functions as a generator and as such, it is a mechanism designed to trigger another one and generate new situations. It has been said that every artistic act is a political act, but does that make a political act an artistic act? The extreme language used in the bomb threats is similar to that of fundamentalist rhetoric and the art manifesto at the same time. I have exploited this overlapping area and devised a game that makes politics a conveyor of artistic practice.

Location: Vanabbe Museum, Eindhoven (NL) / Curated by Charles Esche