Arno Coenen

Baghdad Disco Arno Coenen & Transformer di Roboter, 04:44, Color, Stereo, NL, 2005

Leaders for news programmes, advertisements, video clips and games all make use of the same visuals to style and animate their messages. While we zap from one TV station to another, the globes, cartoon characters, logos and three-dimensional letters tumble across the screen to accentuate the information they represent. Arno Coenen has moulded his Baghdad Disco into precisely this form of smooth and shiny icons that do not seem to be bothered by gravity. It starts with giant headlines such as ‘Breaking news’, that make room for an upbeat story in which golden Uzis, the Berlin bear, dancing Lego figures in veils and arabicized electro pop play a major role. The way in which these icons – or actually the things they refer to – relate to each other in real life is strained, to say the least. But despite the announcement of an ‘explosive situation’ when one of the Lego men blows himself up, they seem to get along quite well in the chaos of the Baghdad Disco.