Mels - A Pause For Thought

A small town on the threshold of late industrialisation, a place of around 8,500 residents, snuggled up against Eastern Switzerland`s advancing mountains, eventually reaching the high Alps. Here in the valley, the river Rhine is still a slender stream, literally coiling around numerous shopping malls. A place not only attractive to summer and winter tourists with a desire for the “authentic”, be it to listen to the prestigious musical society or to count young men from 6 different cantons entering the barracks to find out if they meet the standards to be incorporated into the section of raw recruits to the army. A growing number of immigrants coming to work and temporary consumers increasingly perforate a previously conspirational village community, committed to tradition and earth.  

project scetch

Over the course of 2 months the “Atelier for Special Functions”, namely twin brothers Frank and Patrik Riklin, knocked on some 7,000 doors to promote the idea of villagers cutting their electricity for 10 minutes, handing out voting papers. On the 17th May 2010 the ballot box was opened on the public ground of the village square: a well, flowers, cobbled streets. 10% of 7,000 ballots spread out on the improvised wooden table surrounded by campaign billboards. Volunteers counted 8.1% of votes to be in favour of the art-based blackout.  

in front of a current cable box

Against the backdrop of heated discussions over the project during communal gatherings with civic representatives, the final outcome came without surprise. The artists’ proposal for a 10-minute power cut (essential machinery excluded) induced emotions, asked fundamental questions; putting a quiet place in uproar; whereas the artists took the group project’s title literally with: a pause for thought.
Topics such as global climate and energy conferences cast their shadows on people who anxiously envisioned the “10 minute gap” in their lives with blurred, anti-iconoclastic sensibility towards an unknown void, blanketed by presumptions. 

before opening the ballot box: banners and artists around the town fountain

The subjectively felt loss juxtaposes unquestioned opulent abundance. What is the influence of 10 minutes under unusual conditions on people’s sensations? Can it be perceived as a (useful, joy filled) welcome gift? Will a pure philosophical approach help experience reverberating sustainability?
The interrupted daily routine in the context of an artistic intervention engulfing a rich fabric of individuals polarizes peoples thoughts affecting social life. Instead of sheer provocation an assumed deficit could have turned beneficial, reshuffling a provincial system. By opposing this challenge the commune of Mels missed out to the first global agency advocating a pioneering intervention. 

corpus delicti

sketch and photographs 2+4 by Atelier für Sonderaufgaben, Frank and Patrik Riklin, Switzerland, 2010
photograph 3 and text by Rayelle Niemann, Zurich, Switzerland, 2010 

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