Art and smoking smoke – you do art until it pops

The world is still in order in Switzerland; At least when it comes to Schanti and the Sabin. With them it works. At some point around 2020, they decide to found an association, “polyphonic perverse”, and with it to make theater. Because: you have to do something. Otherwise you break. And if you have to do something, you can do that too: culture. Or art. Or rather entertainment, because what art and culture are, no one has known for thousands of years, and that is not important, the philosopher should argue about that. It is important: to drink a white wine spritzer when working, sit in kitchens for a long time and talk about exciting concepts with exciting people. So all of this and of course also for: money.

So the two, the Schanti and the Sabin, do culture by not shearing around art. They pull a provincial theater group on land, organize support applications, improve catering, get sponsors on board, and all of this they enter them neatly into their Excel tables so that it is clear afterwards. What you play doesn’t matter anyway, it just has to be fresh and somehow stand out.

And there is suddenly a new opportunity in the whole application frame, through the Jules, that is the dealer who supplies the entire art scene there with grass. And he has a complete safe with cash. And he just doesn’t know where to put the money, the Jules. And that’s why the Schanti then convert this club a bit so that the Jules can also deposit into the pension fund and has a taxable income at all. And the whole thing goes well for a while until the Manon comes, that is the cultural editor of this provincial sheet, and it was probably boring, and then she researched and then suddenly it wasn’t going well. But that’s actually another story.

The book has a charming way out of time: all the big, difficult topics do not take place here; Do not have to take place either. And if they still take place – for example when the pandemic breaks over the small, perfect art world – then all of this remains strangely unreal – understandably unreal, because the Schanti and the Sabin and her whole cultural ruins do not have much to do with reality anyway: they live from air and love and the little money laundering, which financed all this whole hocus -pocus.

And you can’t be angry with them because all of these excavators and high -stapler are extremely likeable. The Schanti, the Sabin, the Jules, are basically all child’s heads who want to play around a bit with their life, work a bit, have a little fun. They do not want anything bad and do not hurt anyone. Also the only really tragic figure – the drunken ghostwriter Yves, who makes the mistake of wanting to take it seriously with the art and then grandiose to write a play of importance – falls into deep despair, but is also overridden in its livelihood that has fallen from time. Yves is not about saying something, but to speak well: to perform art. In the end, only one figure is really unappealing: the Manon, this traitor, who has the cheek, takes her job seriously and leaves this whole air castle.

Béla Rothenbühler has written such a loving satire on the cultural company, you almost forget that there are people who still mean something; to whom art still means something. In “Polyphon Pervers” it is not possible – Rothenbühler would say: zero comma zero – about art, but only about escapism. And it is about that this escapism does not lead anywhere when it meets himself; It just takes a place like Switzerland that it can still go together.

On the one hand, the charm of the book is that it is incredibly well written and that even this promise of art to be allowed to be entertained without a license can indulge. It is a book that sounds as if you were to tell such a funny story at some counter that you are exceptionally ready to keep your face for two hours. Béla Rothenbühler manages to find a sound that pulls a sound from Uwe Dethier – translated by Uwe Dethier. And on the other hand, if you like, you can find bigger things in it. One of the key scenes of the novel is the one when, as part of a performance, predatory art from Africa is live and sent out of the museum on site: this is just a classic stoner idea. How complicated it is to dedicate predatory art back, not only for the museums that you have housed so far, but especially for the communities on site, does not matter in the consideration. It’s all about the scandal, about the gesture. Morality is: you make art that slams. Until it pops. And when it pops, you only did art.

But that doesn’t have to be, the book itself obviously wants to entertain. To put it in the words of the first-person narrator: Béla Rothenbühler Easy did it.

Béla Rothenbühler: Polyphon Pervers. From the Lucerne German by Uwe Dethier, Voland & Quist, 212 pages, born, € 22.