Exhibitions
HAPPYLAND
| WHERE | YEAR |
|---|---|
|
25ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo |
2002 |
Come live in Happyland!
Come and feel again what happiness is!
A city that just fills us with pleasure. It’s the end of fear, of anguish… of freedom. Security is first and foremost.
What is the advantage of being free? Walking about dying of fear? Well, in Happyland all of these frivolities have been abolished.
Does some type of pleasure call to you to leave your home, give your hand to your child, and walk calmly about your neighborhood with your poodle on the leash? Where’s the fun? Why do it? To come across intolerable neighbors? To say hello to the barber who, last week, cut your hair atrociously? (Whoever does something without meaning to?) To observe the horror of the architecture ?
This model of a city in which people can come across each other, look at each other, get to know each other, fall in love upon just a casual encounter, this model is totally out of fashion.
In Happyland, no! This will never happen. You do not come across anyone, you see no one, you know no one, you do not fall in love; but you also do not fool yourself, do not suffer, and that way it’s better for everyone.
This does not mean that you cannot go out for a stroll in the parks, along the viaducts, or along the river. There are countless shops in the shopping mall that sell life preservers and, of course, you are not going to have a poodle in Happyland. It’s such a ridiculous, decorative dog. But if you have a pit-bull, why not. Unleashed, obviously.
Another great advantage is that Happyland is a town without a history. A city politically and economically unaligned with any other civilization. A city uncommitted to any ideal, that is, a city with remote possibilities of suicidal terrorist attacks.
Nonetheless, be forewarned: the “New Twin Towers” are set horizontally, and since there is no interpersonal communication, there are no post offices in Happyland, in order to avoid anthrax contamination. However, inside the shopping mall, there is an area reserved for a suicidal-bomber explosion.
It is extremely well located – beside a food court.
Life in Happyland is, indeed, very tranquil. You know, that placid life of a small town, that life we idealize?
Very well, this is how it is in Happyland!
You drive calmly out of one of the magnificent condos like Le Hameau, Ruins of Morumbi, or Aero-Home in your armored car (don’t install smoked glass!). Be chin out and up. Face the assailant and let him see who’s shooting. If you survive, cross through the Refugee Park and go straight to your office, located in the “New Twin Towers.” Spend the day in your “armored” office, communicating solely by telephone with your employees. This warm contact among people is “getting-together.” That is to say that it gives an agreeable tone to one more day of work. And that’s when you ask us: if communication is done by telephone, why do you come from your home to the office? Bad question. You go out a bit, take a change of compressed air, see new people through the bullet-proof windows, even though they are uninteresting and have nothing to talk about on the cell phone, and most important: the fact that you left your home early in the morning and finally have the certainty of returning there in the evening safe and sound. Perhaps more safe than sound.
When returning from the office, it will cost you nothing to go by the Kidnap Victim Drop-Off, just to see if anyone in the family who has been kidnapped this week is there. Whether one is or not, go home happy.
Sunday is the day to take the family out on the Armored Bateau-Mouche in the morning and to visit the Bomb-Car Hall in the afternoon, and how about winding up the day in the Shopping Center, at the movies? Obviously not to see that sugary type film like the “The Cyborg Exterminator.” After all, we go to the movies to see something stronger, more impacting, more unusual to make our adrenaline soar; something totally different from our day-to-day routine. What about a film on love?
After this horrible experience, go straight home and lock the door several times. Stay there. Make your life the real “reality show.” But without a happy ending.
Happiness is what we have an excess of in Happyland.
Isay Weinfeld e Marcio Kogan
AERO-HOME
Inspired by the most modern airports in the world, this residential edifice offers its dwellers an absolutely unique security system.
When you get to the condominium, park your car near the private departure gate, unbuckle your seat belt, and walk through a tunnel. It provides direct access to your apartment.
Through this procedure, you avoid any contact with the outer world, thus fouling any attempt at mugging, kidnapping, rape, and, in particular, car jockeys. It is recommended that the inhabitants arrive three hours early in order to go through the general body and package check procedure. It’s safer that way.
Among other features, the Aero-Home hás a pizza-pass-thru hatch in each apartment, bullet-proof Windows, and a closed circuit television system, which hás twenty varied program channels in black and White that always show halls, elevators, vestibules, and other common-use áreas of the building.
In addition to the four cinematographically glamorous suítes, this apartment offers the exclusive “VIP LOUNGE” concept so that you may receive your transient visitors in comfort.
Aero-Home dwellers communicate with each other only by interphones scattered throughout the building.
The gateman is electronic.
ARMORED BATEAUX-MOUCHES
The Armored Bateaux-Mouches are an excellent recreational option at Happyland. They have everything you might desire on a Sunday outing: safety, safety and safety.
You go in and sit down (due to security problems, you shoul get there three hour ahead of time). Obviously, out of fear you dare not talk with anyone, since the person next to you might very well be a terrorist.
The boat shakes a lot. It feels a bit like driving our cars over our well-paved streets. So, if you do get motion sickness, you’re just putting on.
Another advantage is that you can’t see anything out the window. It is sine qua non that the lighting be a bright yellow like that in Paris. That city’s powerful reflectors would be installed on the Bateaux-Mouches themselves, lighting up the most beautiful of cities. However, in our case, since the very opposite is being dealt with, the lighting will be installed on the banks to throw their light on our delicate little armored boats.
It’s like a Disneyworld attraction, just transported into real life. It’s very exciting.
The trip takes five minutes.
LE HAMEAU DE LA REINE CONDOMINIUM
It’s the chic of the chic. It’s the most sophisticated and luxurious residential condo in Happyland. It sits high up in the city, the so-called “Hill”, which has a panoramic view. The houses’ façades are look-alikes of the Rocinha favela.But that’s justthe façade. Opening the door made of wooden boards, you enter the halls, sumptuously lined with extremely expensive Greek marble, and gradually move on to the haughty palace kitchen guard. This condominium is the privilege of the very, very rich. It was drawn up with the intention of not exhibiting one sign of wealth. They say that it is necessary to arrive three hour ahead of time to get in, due to the strict security system. It’s safer.
The entrance hall of each house is, in truth, its garage. You have to go through it to get into the house. Since, for security reasons, the owners only use taxis to get about, this is the only way they have to show their guests how many and which luxury cars they have acquired.
There are chic shops galore nearby. But all look alike. The restaurants, for example: you go into a dirty, odorous corner luncheonette with the paunchy owner behind the counter. But when you open one of the doors of the bar, you are in the Brazilian branch of France’s Tour D’Argent. There are also a large number of dry-cleaners around the launder all that white collar money. They say that the next edition of Casa Cor covers this. Can you imagine that?
If Marie-Antoinette lived in happyland, Le Hameau De La Reine would certainly be her refuge.
SHOPPING CENTER
Can you possibly think of anything better to do?
Relish the countless delights that this temple of consumption prepared for you.
You find everything here: what is on exhibit at the Car Bomb Hall be for sale here. Here are dozens of clothing stores selling army clothes, burkas, bulletproof vests, bomb belts, etc. There are CD shops that sell everything from the Beatles’ “Revolver” to the last recording of “Guns and Roses”, then go on to the Spanish hit “Granada”, plus shops specialized in electronic products for spying.
In the area of toys, there are new launches like the “Big Brother” game that twelve people can play. It’s a good exercise in confinement: the winner is the last one still playing. Or try War. There are large bookstores that sell from Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” to illustrated children’s books like “Where Is Obama Bin Laden”, in which you have to pick him out amongst a multitude of people.
Then there are the Irmãos Metralha (The Beagle Boys) comic strips. There is an enormous candy shop, with every imaginable type of candy. And there is a group of latest generation movie theaters, running filma that span from Tarantino films to Altman’s “[Murder in] Gosford Park”.
And the food court? It makes you drool. It has everything from restaurants specialized in pistol-shrimp (prawns) to the ultra-medern Japanese restaurant Hiroshima. At the moment, one of the biggest successes in the mall is the shop called Uzi e Abuzi that only sells Israeli rifles. To get into the shop, there are three-hour-long body search lines. It’s safer.
Don’t forget to take your son every week to train the sharp-shooting stand or the Russian roulette stand, or even to play Counter Strike. But your outing will never be complete if you don’t drop in at the dog shop, with all those cute, cuddly little things in the window. Don’t get upset if your child chooses an Afghan Hound to take home . After all, don’t forget that your child is an espoleta, a real live wire.
AUTHORS
Isay Weinfeld
Marcio Kogan
PHOTOS
Andres Otero
