“Art is the lie that reveals reality.” Jeroen Brouwers - “Culture, considered as a process, means acquiring a vast deal of useless knowledge, and then forgetting it.” Albert Jay Nock - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Douglas Huebler - “In life and in art one has to begin each day anew.” Louis Couperus



Title: Reset Happiness
2014



photos by: Ben Nienhuis

Project executed by invitation of the 's-Hertogenbosch Museum of Contemporary Art with financial support of Stichting Doen, Mondriaan Fund and bkkc. Special thanks go to the Den Bosch city library.





DEN BOSCH - Unhappiness is both exploited and nurtured by the happiness industry. Self-help books dangle a carrot on a string, with titles like 'Change your life in 7 days, and 'Time for yourself and still get everything done'. In the Den Bosch city library there are over 700 such books on the subject of happiness on the shelves. Sjaak Langenberg and Rosé de Beer borrowed all these books in one go, leaving behind empty shelves. With this intervention Langenberg and de Beer began their contributions to the three-year research project Reinventing Happiness, an assignment from the 's-Hertogenbosch Museum of Contemporary Art and guest curator Joanna van der Zanden. The aim of Reinventing Happiness is to develop alternative social concepts and to investigate if an alternative definition of happiness could deliver new perspectives for the future. Other research contributions are being provides by Jeanne van Heeswijk in collaboration with Paul De Bruyne, and Frank Bruggeman.

© Sjaak Langenberg & Rosé de Beer