In 1992, Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley were invited to participate in an exhibition of Californian artists in Austria. In the space of the Krinzinger gallery, they built a chalet typical of the Austrian folk image on one side, and on the other, the façade of the American Bar in Vienna, a venue of predilection for expatriates. In this setting, which marks the meeting of cultural clichés of California and Austria, they staged (in 6 chapters) the characters of the famous series Heidi by Johanna Spyri, a famous 19th century Swiss German author. Heidi is the first name of a young orphan girl who has many adventures in the idyllic setting of the Alps, in the company of her friend Peter and her grandfather.
In Kelley and McCarthy's version, the young girl's grandfather is a pervert, and Peter is retarded.
The two artists wear silicone masks, like those used in horror films. They contribute to the reinterpretation of the story in cruel and perverse stagings. The opening scene characterises the subversion of the innocence of these children's stories from the outset, since, through a heart-shaped window of the chalet, the puppet of the blonde heroine is sexually assaulted by another puppet. The use of silicone puppets does nothing to detract from the intensity of the gestures, perfectly embodying the idea of representation, rendered perceptible through a stylistic device. It is possibly one of the most violent and perverse films by Kelley and McCarthy, since the initial innocence renders the cruelty and perversion all the more disturbing. Behind the violence inflicted on the naive Heidi, we also find the tormented world of fables and mythology told to children.
The principle of cultural exchange, a pretext for the exhibition, is the two artists' target – not only through the subversion of a children's book, but also through the use of clichés – the crocheted blankets or Tyrolean hat, which are used here in the midst of scatological scenes. In this way, they destroy the sanitized image of a certain folk image of Austria, in the same way that they abuse the concept of “international exchange”.

Patricia Maincent