Saturday, 16 May 2015, 07–09.30 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCr8zsVYAjU

Live performance (Lars Arrhenius, SE, and Olav Westphalen, DE/US)
Lars and Olav is a collaboration by Stockholm-based artists Lars Arrhenius and Olav Westphalen.
In their individual practices both artists have been testing the boundaries of entertainment and art for years. Westphalen has been a successful cartoonist (as Rattelschneck), a satirist for print media and an occasional TV-comedy writer, while simultaneously using similar strategies with a straight face in the contemporary art world. Lars Arrhenius has authored numerous films which exist, both, in the film- and TV-world as well as in the contemporary art world. He has been a co-author of various, widely celebrated children’s programs on Swedish Television (i.e. Showtime and Bon). He has also written music for film and TV as well as for his own, Kraftwerk-inspired concept album (Songs from Society).
In 2013 Arrhenius and Westphalen created Bomb, a stand-up comedy performance to techno music. After the success of Bomb they decided to expand their collaboration.
Lars and Olav is something between Gilbert and George, the 80’s electro band Trio and a classic endurance performance. It is a music show, a spoken word show, a piece of comedy, a parody of all the above. It is dead serious. It mixes techno, house music, and cartoon soundtracks, often in surprising and seemingly non-sensical instrumentations. It is well done, even though Westphalen cannot sing.
Lars and Olav sing and speak about the smug and cozy hypocrisy of academic liberalism, about progressive comedy as a cliched and reactionary release, they even wrote a hymn for the newly ascendant Swedish right wing movement. Their performances are painful and embarrassing, but still they make people dance. They are actually entertaining. Which may make them the opposite of entertainment.