You don't really give it much thought, how weird standing still in a shopping centre like Hoog Catharijne is. At least: if you don't stand still with your head towards a shop window or your fingers in a bowl of fast food. The code for glancing around a shopping mall is so common that it takes some getting used to even for yourself when something forces you to suddenly really look. The art event Call of the Mall achieves that effect in a very short time. Before you know it, a screamingly lit shoe store has become an art installation, including matching customers and music: what is real suddenly doesn't seem real at all. Stronger art cannot work.
Call of the Mall is a unique event because Hoog Catharijne suddenly shows itself from a different side. Namely that of one of the largest and most accessible art galleries in the world. The shopping heart of the Netherlands is hated by anyone who has to look at it from outside, walk through or around it in the evening, or ends up on a busy Saturday on their way from the station to the terraces in the centre of Utrecht. The art event is now turning it into something it never was: an adventurous place, where nothing is what it seems. Even the cleaners join in the plot.
The works range from spectacle pieces like Troika's rope fountain or Krijn de Koning's colour house to an entire floor of the one of the numerous car parks turned into a living black-and-white photograph of that spot in 1973: grey-painted cars from that year complete the illusion. The mega teapot on the roof of Catharijne Bridge by Lily van der Stokker is a perky contrast to the stranded UFO on the roof of the old NS Headquarters, around the corner
The event also provides access to places no one expects. An urban farm has been set up on the roof of Hoog Catharijne by Esther van de Wiel. Where she now grows broad beans and potatoes was a walking area in the very first months of Hoog Catharijne's existence, including street signs, seats and terraces. It didn't last long, as the many nooks and obscure passages turned out to be particularly popular with people who had other plans than to stroll around. The same goes for the galleries in Hoog Catharijne itself: once there were also shops there, now they are closed off because shortly after opening they were already more popular with people throwing stuff down, or even urinating through the railing. The only place still in use is the Mirliton theatre, a cabaret hall that is still in completely original 1970s condition. The film shown there is a slightly disturbing 14-minute piece of work, in which we see people waiting and staring.
The artworks are not disturbing anywhere else, but they are disruptive, such as the Tankman, a wax statue of the Chinese with messenger bag who managed to stop an entire column of tanks during the 1989 uprising in China's Tiananmen Square. He now stands in the middle of one of the busier walkways. With a fence around him and a sturdy guard, because apparently shoppers are a little less easily pushed aside than a Chinese tank column.
Astonishment stirs the only truly inflammatory work by Nathan Coley. On a façade above the construction pit into which the waters of Catharijnesingel will flow again in a few years, the text "Burn the Village, Feel the warmth". A cry that was used during the riots in English city centres a few years ago. A slogan, too, that many a passer-by will have muttered in private, when seeing Hoog Catharijne.
For the time being, it's okay to stay put, because the event really makes you stop and think about art in a completely new way, but more importantly, the bizarre world of the shopping mall.
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
