[artinfo] COLD TURKEY - AN INVITATION

[KW Institute for Contemporary Art]

Hotel Marienbad 009
Benjamin Blanke und Claudia Kapp
COLD TURKEY - AN INVITATION

From April 1st to 30th, 2010 a drug detox residency will be offered.
Artists, curators, critics and all those 
professionally related to the arts are invited to 
apply.
The Hotel Marienbad suite offers a confidential 
retreat secluded from the public eye.
Your drug detox will take place under therapeutic guidance and medical care.
Privacy and anonymity will be respected throughout the entire process.

Medical and therapeutic care provided by 
Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe, Berlin.
Please contact us prior to March 28th, 2010 at contact at hotelmarienbad.com.
All correspondence will remain confidential.

A project by Benjamin Blanke & Claudia Kapp

COLD TURKEY - AN INVITATION is an intervention as 
well as an invitation. Drugs consumption usually 
takes place in a grey area of society; in the art 
world it has traditionally been accorded a 
special status linked to expansion of 
consciousness and disdain for taboos. An 
iconography of intoxication and the Dionysian 
mythology, moreover, are often used to argue the 
possibility of non-destructive drugs consumption. 
The invitation offers guests interested in 
undertaking drugs detoxification a safe place and 
medical guidance throughout the process.

Artists Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp have 
used the invitation extended by Hotel Marienbad 
as an opportunity to extend an invitation of 
their own. Their advertisement publicizes a taboo 
phenomenon while at the same time offering the 
possibility to enter into dialogue and to 
participate in a genuine detoxification program. 
The project venue Hotel Marienbad is both an 
artistic space and a symbol for the hotel as a 
public place that paradoxically guarantees 
anonymity and discretion. Its function as a 
hideout, meanwhile, has provided the stuff for 
many a legend.

The project COLD TURKEY - AN INVITATION takes as 
its starting point the specific situation of 
drugs consumption in the art world. This initial 
focus reflects the fact that drugs have different 
functions in each scene or subculture, 
sociocultural milieu and local culture. The 
traditions of psychoactive substance use 
developed in social micro- as well as 
macrocultures represent a potent rival to legal 
regulations in determining drugs use in specific 
social groups and in forming ritualized behaviors 
with regard to drugs.

The project COLD TURKEY - AN INVITATION offers 
each guest an individualized treatment plan 
tailored to their particular needs. All responses 
to the invitation will be handled with care and 
confidentiality. To gather the medical 
information necessary for developing the 
treatment plan, guests will be asked to fill out 
a questionnaire for assessment by the project's 
medical staff. The project will either provide or 
procure a place in a detox program for all 
respondents. Medical and therapeutic attendance 
will be provided by the medical staff of 
Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe in Berlin.


Benjamin Blanke, born in Karlsruhe in 1973, 
settled in Berlin after completing his studies 
(from 1998 to 2005) at the Staatliche Akademie 
der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe and at the 
University of the Arts Bremen.

Claudia Kapp, born in Freiburg in 1974, studied 
at the University of the Arts Bremen and at the 
Royal Academy of Art Den Haag from 1998 to 2005. 
She lives and works in Berlin.

Situated in the front building of KW Institute 
for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Hotel Marienbad 
since its opening in Spring 2008 opens up 
possibilities beyond the white cube by offering a 
poetic space for highly diverse modes of 
presentation and performance formats. Eluding all 
attempts at defining it as either a private or a 
public space, it is both useful space and 
artistic platform. Whether they present an 
exhibition or host an evening event is up to the 
guests, who do not pay for bed and board in the 
usual way. Instead, the accepted currency are 
artistic interventions that subject the place to 
permanent change. Thus each guest leaves traces 
which combine to form part of a collective 
process that is reflected in the steadily rising 
figure of the room number.

Supported by the Friends of KW Institute for Contemporary Art.


KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Hotel Marienbad
Auguststr. 69
D-10117 Berlin

www.hotelmarienbad.com
www.kw-berlin.de