The Dr Yes Cosmic Therapy Unit
For most of the 90's I was involved in a huge self-financed art project about happiness and creativity. We created a complete fiction of a 100 year old 'multi-global company', Bonk Business Inc. - one hundred years of history, advertising, machines. innovations etc. We created enough stuff to fill 1000 m2 of exhibition space which then toured Europe and the States.
It was a giant folly. But almost everybody 'got it' - except the conservatives. We have many letters from ordinary people saying that the exhibition made them feel optimistic and happy again because so much effort had gone into something so ridiculous. For us it was a complex joke poking fun at business and the art establishment.
By way of illustration: One of the technologies we 'invented' was Cosmic Therapy. The machine above was also shown (by invitation) at a medical/health trade fair in Helsinki. (we also did this in Sao Paolo). We had a doctor type and a nurse type on a stand who invited people to test the Dr Yes therapy by sitting in it. They were promised that it would make them happier. The 'technology' was explained to them (of course it made no sense). Then our 'patients' would sit in the machine and don the helmet while the 'doctor' adjusted the controls and the 'patient's' friends and onlookers were gathered around smiling and laughing.
Everyone reported after the therapy that they were much happier, and the queue to try it out got longer. They all understood that it was a game - but the happiness was genuine. They were happy to take part in the 'folly'.
Not so a major German medical device manufacturer from a big stand nearby. They wanted to buy the rights. They wanted to make money from this amazing device. We told them it really didn't do anything. They thought we were negotiating. In the end they got very angry.
At the opening of the exhibition at the Finnish Embassy in Washington DC the old bepearled establishment matrons were peeing themselves - they got it. The young invited spinmeisters were wandering aound looking totally bemused. They didn't get it. Confronted by a fiction even more rídiculous than their own, their powers of analysis failed them.
Maybe the fiction in which they live can only be exposed by a greater fiction. You can't be me, I'm taken
Brilliant, Sven, Monty Python at its best...
This must be the anarchism our friend said he was missing...... "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Some people have raved about it, but I was a bit unhappy with some of the acting, including my own small part.
http://www.oneworld.org.yu/cosmice.htm You can't be me, I'm taken
Also that Yle, the state broadcaster, agreed that a Finnish production be made in English and broadcast with subtitles in primetime. I think it was a first.
And you should be warned that after it was shown internationally we got a lot of calls from a Swedish gentleman who told us 'I am naken on my bed, and I am playing with my rocket'. Controlled insanity can push some people over the edge. You can't be me, I'm taken
I will proceed to watch your creation (and acting)... but now with some caution. :)
enjoy! You can't be me, I'm taken
one of my top 5 fave ET comments evvah! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Thus the reason that astronauts returning to Earth were unable to walk was not due to the effects of gravity on muscles, but the effect of cosmic particles on a single muscle. Suffering 'The Irish Toothache' for a couple of days in a tight-fitting suit was a problem that only a Bonk scientist, Professor Hans Dröppeldorf, was able to resolve. You can't be me, I'm taken
