Saunaordnung (sauna regime)

Roland Bindre­it­er (AUT) /// 
Man­fred Engel­mayr (AUT) /// 
Reto Mäder (SUI) /// 
Wol­fram Reit­er (AUT) /// 
A.S.A.P. (AUT) /// 
Urs Jaeg­gi (SUI/GER) ///

Sun, Novem­ber 17 2002, 19:00 /// 
Sauna of Park­bad Linz ///

with sup­port by dm drogeriemarkt

Heat, cold, chaos, order. An exper­i­men­tal evening at the sauna with sweat­ing noise.

“The guests at the sauna should refrain from doing any­thing which doesn’t go con­firm with the safe­ness, the silence, the order and the good man­nors.” (§ 8, para­graph 1, “behav­iour at the sauna”, part of the city law of Böblin­gen, last changes 27th of June 2001)

Saunas are ordered micro cos­mos, small order machines. At Fin­ish sweat­ing bathes one is not only sweat­ing. There is also exist­ing a regime: a struc­tured and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed rule struc­ture. Fol­low­ing it does not just mean the unre­flect­ed sub­or­di­nat­ing to the ordered micro cos­mos sauna, but also a social normed norm of order per se. Observ­ing a per­nick­ety clean­ness sanc­tioned if not paid atten­tion to, the exclu­sion of men­tal ill per­sons and epilep­tics, the pro­hi­bi­tion of not dis­turb­ing the guests at the silent room and that it is for­bid­den to be noisy or to sing in the sauna — these things seam to be only nat­ur­al, which are of course not nat­u­ral­ly nat­ur­al, but cor­re­spond to a pushed through and cer­tain kind of man­ner and view of regime.

Fol­low­ing the order with and/or against the naked chaos? Safe­ness as neces­si­ty for a gen­er­al well-being with and/or against casu­al free­dom? Good man­ners, bad man­ners? “It is not per­mit­ted, among oth­ers: […] c) Spit­ting on the floor or in the water of the sauna” (§ 8, para­graph 2, “behav­iour at the sauna”, part of the city law of Böblin­gen, last changes 27th of June 2001) or “It is not per­mit­ted: […] f) Talk­ing about polit­i­cal sub­ject in the whole sauna facil­i­ty” (§ 8, para­graph 2, “behav­iour at the sauna”, part of the city law of Böblin­gen, last changes 27th of June 2001)? Which of these pro­hi­bi­tions is part of the sauna rules of Böblin­gen? Both of them could be or are they both just com­plete­ly absurd? Which dis­cur­sive pow­ers are respon­si­ble for con­struct­ing and the con­sti­tu­tion of these rule(s)?

The art and cul­ture col­lec­tive “qujOchÖ” wants to blur the bor­ders between order, safe­ness, chaos, noise, silence, free­dom, heat, clean­ness, leisure time and cold with the project SAUNA REGIME . Urs Jaeg­gi, philoso­pher, man of let­ters, painter and sculp­tor from Switzer­land, com­bines part of his book “art”: “It all starts with nois­es and it will stay noisy. It is our first con­nec­tion with the out­side. It brings us to the chaos, (…) and forces us to the order, forces us to the in between. The noise is de-con­struc­tive and fright­en­ing, but nec­es­sary because order and super­fi­cial rep­e­ti­tion are neigh­bours of death. By agree­ing the noise, there will be silence.” (Jaeg­gi, Urs, Kun­st, Alexan­der Ver­lag Berlin, Berlin 2002, p. 8 f.) with parts of his ear­ly philo­soph­ic and soci­o­log­i­cal trea­tis­es: “Does­n’t the “total his­to­ry” cor­re­spond to the chaos? Is the order we “found” maybe by chance? Who tells us that the order (…) cor­re­spond to a real order?” (Jaeg­gi, Urs, Ord­nung und Chaos. Struk­tu­ral­is­mus als Meth­ode und Mode, Suhrkamp Ver­lag, Frank­furt am Main 1968).

Dur­ing the sec­ond part of the lec­ture of Urs Jaeg­gie there will be shown a audio-visu­al adven­ture of Bindreiter/Engelmayr/Mäder/Reiter (mous­si bucy, bul­bul, Roland von der Aist, rm74, Neun Volt, Head of Yagan, OHNE, back­lab) with the video-col­lec­tive A.S.A.P. (part of “q_#. exper­i­mentelle Fluchtlinie”).

The guests or the audi­ence can enjoy a glim­mer­ing and crys­tal noisy roar­ing, mean­while sweat­ing in the sauna. But, pay atten­tion: “[…] Avoid to soil the bench­es with sweat. […]” (§ 11, para­graph 1, “behav­iour in the rooms of the sauna”, part of the city law of Böblin­gen, last changes 27th of June 2001)

An exper­i­ment of 90°C to order sweat­ing bod­ies and thoughts.

www.backlab.at/rvda
www.trost.at/bulbul
www.domizil.ch
www.sra.at
www.universes-in-universe.de/jaeggi/start.htm

(Camera/Editing: qujOchÖ)

(Camera/Editing: qujOchÖ)