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| Homme moyen by Daniel Chluba, 2020. Photo: Julia Frankenberg |
I like to think that Daniel Chluba trained, or who knows, even got inspired for his performance "homme moyen" while visiting me.
Over the last few months, Daniel Chluba visited me trice. The first time he was too late to open the door to the "garden house." You see, the door opens automatically for just a short amount of time. The second time Daniel Chluba was too quick, which left him also bouncing on the door. The third time, he could open the garden door without a problem.
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| Homme moyen by Daniel Chluba, 2020. Photo: Julia Frankenberg |
Basically, my garden door trained Daniel Chluba to obtain a medium pace when entering the front house. The time slot for the garden door is based on solid calculations on how fast or slow an average person walks from the front to the back. That is what I was told by the technicians who installed the ingenious safety system.
Of course, I get annoyed by the garden door because most of the time I have to go downstairs to open it for visitors who are apparently not average. I do appreciate mediocrity more in literature. Take for instance Sylvia Smith's Misadventures about a very mediocre life that has no pointe, is of no importance, and is not even what you would call "funny".
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| Homme moyen by Daniel Chluba, 2020. Photo: Julia Frankenberg |
Or what about The Diary of a Nobody by George Grosssmith and Weedon Grossmith that features Mr. Pooter: "Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a "Somebody" - why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth."
Once, Mr. Pooter has a visit by Mr. Huttle, who gets terribly upset by the words "happy medium": "Happy medium, indeed. Do you know 'happy medium' are two words which mean 'miserable mediocrity'? I say, go first class or third; marry a duchess or her kitchenmaid. The happy medium means respectability, and respectability means insipidness. Does it not, Mr. Pooter?"
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| Homme moyen by Daniel Chluba, 2020. Photo: Julia Frankenberg |
When Daniel Chluba visited me for the third time, we were already in Corona times and kept our social distance. By then, everyone was inevitably trained to be a "homme moyen" and this might have helped Daniel Chluba to reach my door in the right amount of time.
The Corona virus turned our existence into an uneventful indoor life where the most exciting thing to do is to go out shopping. It also brought out our cravings for security in the form of toilet paper and flower. At the beginning, I wondered if everyone was now suddenly going to bake their own bread. But two weeks into quarantine, I was also baking, not bread but crêpes and I ate them happily all by myself.
On Sunday night, Daniel Chluba performed the homme moyen on the live Instagram of Bark Berlin Gallery. The homme moyen is masked with a loaf of homemade bread. The mask prevents him to talk because it has not mouth. But the mask has a long nose (14,5 cm) that is ideal to stick through fences.
The invitation of Berlin Bark Gallery read as followed: "The convention “one must be better than home moyen, better than the average” originates from faith in data, where measurement, calculation and evaluation become a new religion. The average is always bullshit! Why does our society orientate itself towards the monster of mediocrity?"
In the three-part video performance homme moyen goes through the phases of quarantine, lying naked and apathetically on the ground, rolling off toilet paper on his nose, doing gymnastics in the street, living it out, peeking his nose through a fence, going for a ride in the car. You can check out the video yourself on the website of Berlin Bark Gallery and feel better - that's what homme moyen is there for, isn't it?