HEIL HORTEN
Film : public
Editing : Baptiste Evrard & Steven Cohen
Original format : color video / 16:9 – HD Video
6 min 36 sec

Heidi Horten Collection, Vienna, AU, 2023.

“Clearly the public persecutor in Vienna is too ashamed to follow up on the charges that have been laid against me by the Heidi Horten Museum

the charge sheet accuses me of damaging one floor – the rose colored precious whatever it is base of the Horten Museum atrium – and of smearing blood on a sculpture base (my blood, their sculpture, stolen funds)

my action in the museum was to outbling and be even more vulgar than Heidi Horten (big task) whose jewellery (a small portion of it) recently sold on a much denounced Christies auction and which realized 200 million euro … the greatest amount ever for a personal collection (provenance stolen Jewish money from Aryanised enterprises dating from the 1930’s by her husband Helmut Horten)

Christies ignored their own policy of not peddling Nazi loot, and pocketed 30 million euro in commission
two weeks ago, one sunny Friday midday, I entered the Heidi Horten Museum without permission and attempted to smash my giant replica diamonds on their floor in a symbolic let’s-relive-Kristalnacht effect

to my surprise, and delight, my diamonds didn’t shatter but bits of the floor did. Blemished be the immoral foundation of the Horten museum

in an improvised gesture i then cut my arm using a fragment which chipped off my diamond, but before I could spread the love, I mean the blood, around the museum I was carried out by two very badly dressed security guards (really Horten Museum, that’s not a good look – there are fashion standards to uphold)

thrown outside, I put Jew blood on the base of a sculpture to reveal its provenance. again, I was roughly disturbed in my art-making and then voila! the police arrived en masse… full of enthusiasm for their performance art workshop … which took the entire rest of the day

at the police station I had a medical examination, a psychological evaluation, was interrogated, charged and had my fingerprints taken

I was most annoyed that the police confiscated my diamonds (in that time honored National Socialist tradition) and that they also seized and refused to return my HEIL HORTEN headgear

I destroyed nothing in the museum that did not belong to me. ok, there was a tiny bit of collateral damage, entirely almost accidental

I refuse to pay any fine should they dare to follow through and insist on one
I am not afraid of punitive administrative procedures, rather that than endorse the perpetrators of genocide and injustice

no Jew is going to give more money to Nazi funded thieving wrongness
I am intent on being aggressively inventive in interrogating a history which is not spoken of in Vienna, home of denial and Holocaust dissociation

Now is the new then there

a performance artist who does not have their studio in the trenches, does not deserve to give themself that name
I am unafraid to stand alone undaunted and denounce the lot of them
pity I never had time to put my shoes on, but then again the Wandering Jew is always depicted barefoot

I hope I left a lasting impression in that shameless self-serving palace which is a testament to crimes against humanity unpunished

I am going to send the Horten Museum a big bill for the performance and for the installation I provided them with
Heidi Horten left 3 billion euro in her estate and a tarnished family name – I’ll take some of the former and contribute to some of the latter

more jewels for sale from Horten in November (Christies again) and more me at it again in her gilded palace

I’m a dedicated repeat offender and generous with my loathing”

Steven Cohen

* “Kristallnacht” is the name given to the violent anti-Semitic program of November 9 and 10, 1938. This name refers to the shards of glass from the windows of Jewish stores that were broken.

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