the project in Irene de Andres Nazi control and brainwashing program investigation continues for more than five years ‘Kraft durch Freude’ (‘Strength with Joy’)Its aim was to secure working-class loyalty through a strict regulation of leisure. Presented the book at MACE on Friday ‘The ship won’t wait’ and the video he recorded about the menus served on board.
On display are images of the three menus presented by the Nazi cruiser Wilhelm Gustloff in 1939, the “classless ship”, an essential part of the program. indoctrination and control of the working class Leisure (‘Kraft durch Freude’ or ‘KdF’, ‘Strength with Joy’) by Nazi Germany. Someone whose hands we see only eats breakfast, lunch and dinner on a white tablecloth, traditional German food, which is plentiful, strong and unappetizing; The repetition of this incessant ritual in a restaurant that eats without a head or body is disturbing and even disgusting for the audience. Irene de Andrés presented her book ‘The Ship Doesn’t Wait’ on Friday. Contemporary Art Museum While the video of the same name is projected behind (MACE); both pieces are part of a project researching the history of the first Nazi cruiser and developing it during his stay at the Spanish Academy in Rome.
The artist found the ship’s original menus and cooked them in collaboration with Javi Álvarez (author of the soundtrack) and Maral Kekejian. The three actors of the recording. He also searched for pottery found on the ship. The result is a video designed for overhead projection that conveys these passengers’ stifling sense of control during their strict mealtimes: “It was very military,” explains De Andrés. “These are huge menus, you have to fill your stomach because it’s part of the alienation program,” says Elena Ruiz, MACE director.
Nothing is accidental: these German meals serve the same purpose for which the holiday program for the working class was designed within the framework of the totalitarian Nazi regime. De Andrés explains it this way in his book: “We need comfortable people with nerves of steel. ‘big politics’, they forcefully claim [el responsable del KdF y el propio Hitler]. What could be better than a vacation at sea to fulfill your duty? Wherever they go, the goal is the same: to glorify German culture above all else”. The artist also underlines the role of sports practice in the alienation of the population under the Nazi dictatorship.
Origin of mass tourism
Irene de Andrés was looking for the origins of the mass tourism of huge cruise ships that swept through cities and suddenly disembarked thousands of people, such as in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the artist began researching the evolution and model of these ships in 2015. “They’re bigger than the city, they’re swallowing it”. De Andrés observed the troubling analogies between colonialism and current tourism that have a common predatory nature: a key city for Spanish conquistadors is now “a symbol of the Yankee conquest because nearly everyone is heading to the United States to spend the summer”: “Since then I have studied the origin of this pattern. Celebration. The first was the United Fruit Company and the cruiser was called the ‘Great White Fleet’. One of their mottos was ‘Following the conquerors across the Caribbean’”. It is precisely tourism, the evolution of tourism, and the use and function of leisure in capitalist society, the guiding thread of the artistic career of the Ibizan creator.
This search takes the artist to the first Nazi resort town of Prora (where he made his feature film) and the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ cruise ship. Designed by Marina Meyer, the publication reproduces original postcards from a former accordion card holder and is co-written by De Andrés and Marta Ramos-Izquierdo. “Thomas Cook and KDF They were pioneers of mass tourism, the biggest tour operators of the 1930s. And this travel model later evolved under other ideologies,” the artist continues in her speech.
“The ship won’t wait” Reminding that this has not changed and this warning is repeated on current cruises, De Andrés explains that this is an instruction in the cruise menu.
The researcher explains to the public that the dictatorships of the 1930s “designed systems of control over leisure to gain support among the working class and to undermine the power of unions, which were so powerful in the late and early 19th century.” 20: “I was more impressed with the Nazi program because he became the biggest tour operator of the time and was working to raise the morale of the soldiers because of the way they sold their joy and even in the concentration camps. This dichotomy between apparent joy and reality. The visuals they used were very powerful, they were very clever in advertising; One of the ones that caught my attention the most is the Aryan couple appearing looking to the horizon. How well they handle happiness, that idea of the future, travel, that you can have a dream vacation too.”
Elena Ruiz Two faces stand out in the artist’s presentation: “Irene de Andres he is an artist, he has a tremendous creative flow but on the other hand he is a researcher. It dives into themes, it goes deeper, and this part amazes me because it matches the other part of it, which is plastic at the same time.”
De Andrés announced that he hopes to finish editing a piece (video) next year in which he reflects the current evolution of the cruise tourism model that he considers “unsustainable”:I have a critical point of view. Cruise ships pollute a lot and don’t leave that much money in ports.”