DISNEYLAND AFTER DARK
Art exhibition curated by Edwin David,
Frans Jacobi, Joachim Koester and Soren Martinsen.
Uppsala Konstmuseum, Slottet, Ingång E, S- 752 37 Uppsala, Sweden.
Telephone + 46 18 27 24 87
Fax: +46 18 50 76 90
1 October - 26 November 1995
The Curators' Introduction
I had all my drawing things laid out at home, and I'd work on plans for the park, as a hobby, at night.
Walt Disney
Disneyland After Dark is a curatorial exploration of the theme park as the subject matter for an art exhibition.
The theme park is an attempt to commodify and control individual and collective fantsies by creating a zone or space in which these fantasies are to be enacted. By means of the architectural structure of the theme park, the visitor is effectively guided through a narrative, a pre-packaged fantasy of the fulfillment of desire.
In this respect the theme park can be seen as a "Museum of Desire". A sanitized carnival, divorced from the possibility of enactment.
The exhibition attempts to illuminate and expose the dark corners and hidden structures of the theme park in which the residue of the "real" carnival survives, and to construct from this residue a new park:
A park of debauchery, melancholy and evil, a corrupted Eden: