M HKA Ensembles

Book, 18.6 x 11.7 cm, 348 p, language: German, publisher: München: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, ISBN: 978-3453675209.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2024/679).

Literary synopsis

What makes Scandinavian misanthropy particular? According to Matias Faldbakken, it is the particular mixture of a welfare state, high standards of living, modern corporate culture, consumer ideology and a society that not only is tolerant, but downright benevolent towards its own opponents and deviators from the norm. The Scandinavia of Faldbakken is a place of early adaptors – pure heaven if you’re in the world of marketing and want to test new consumer products, new strategies, new cultural habits and new ideologies. Only, there are no ideologies left according to Faldbakken. In the world that he depicts, talk is cheap, nothing is shocking and perversion is the norm. In short, anything goes. The second novel of Matias Faldbakken takes the nihilistic satire from his first novel to yet another level. In Macht und Rebel - Scandinavian Misanthropy II, Faldbakken shows a world where all choices are fakes and the inescapable poverty is the absolute loss of values. There is simply nothing to rebel against. This time, Faldbakken takes on the counter-culture as prime target for his satire.

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.