Hello, My Name is Jens Haaning

Jens Haaning

Hello, My Name is Jens Haaning

Dijon, France: Le Consortium, 2003

208 pp., 19 × 24.5 × 1.5 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

An early monograph/artist book presenting works from between the years 1993 and 2002 which challenge notions of acceptable art aesthetics, immigrant and refugee realities, and economic and legal constraints. The volume features texs by Jennifer Allen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Nina Folkersma, Harald Fricke, Hou Hanru, Lars Bang Larsen and Vincent Pecoil.

Hello, My Name is Jens Haaning is available from Les Presses du Reel, here, for 15.00 €.

Last week it was reported that Haaning had absconded with $84,000 loaned to him by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, in protest of "miserable working conditions" and low fees offered to him by the institution. The Denmark museum had provided the artist with the funds to re-create two earlier works for their exhibition on the subject of labour. 

The works were to have presented the average yearly income of workers in Austria and Denmark. Haaning instead submitted two blank canvases under the new title of Take the Money and Run. 

The institution plans to seek repayment of the funds, but has displayed the new work in the current exhibition, possibly making recouping the costs through the courts significantly more difficult.

"The work is that I have taken their money,” Haaning told Danish radio. “It’s not theft. It is breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work. The artwork is essentially about the working conditions of artists. It is a statement saying that we also have the responsibility of questioning the structures that we are part of. And if these structures are completely unreasonable, we must break with them. It can be your marriage, your work - it can be any type of societal structure". 

The story has been reported on CNN, CBS, the BBC, NPR, ABC, The Guardian, as well as most Art publications. 

The exhibition continues until January 16th, 2022.