"Balkan Heartbreak: a hit in Berlin"

Claire Brentnall

“Unlike the ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from broken relationships, the Museum offers every individual the chance to overcome the emotional collapse through creation, i.e, by contributing to the Museum’s collection. The individual gets rid of ‘controversial objects’, triggers of momentarily ‘undesirable’ emotions, by turning them into museum exhibits and thereby participating in the creation of a preserved collective emotional history.” http://www.brokenships.com/skladiste/more_about_concept.pdf

The travelling exhibition “The Museum of Broken Relationships” visited Berlin in October 2007, and according to the BBC News website, was “a hit”. Originating in Croatia, the show encourages people from the cities it visits to donate objects that may hold memories of terminated relationships, along with a narrative that the item evokes for the person. It is a concept which proceeds from the assumption that “objects possess integrated fields”; that an object is rarely simply just that.

Karl Marx states, "A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing." After analysing the object though, it becomes "a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties." Indeed, it seems that we as human beings cannot escape this cathexis of certain possessions, and The Museum of Broken Relationships explores this notion. This is reminiscent of Fluxus that emerged during the 1960s, as the experimental group subverted the traditional art object by finding beauty in everyday items such as stamps, tablecloths and posters. So, what must occur for an object to gain metaphysical meaning in everyday life?

When an inanimate object enters into our lives to coincide with an episode to which we have assigned great importance (i.e. a love relationship), it begins to exist not only as a physical thing, but gains presence as a psychical and symbolic entity. Therefore, it is clear for the viewer to see why some objects have been contributed to the Berlin exhibition: a wedding dress after one woman’s painful divorce becomes a poignant reminder of happy times turned sour: a girl’s teddy bear given by an ex boyfriend represents the naivety of young love. However, some objects such as a prosthetic leg, a garden gnome and a pair of underpants appear more ambiguous. The exhibition’s organiser Zvonimir Dobrovic told the BBC, "People really enjoy being here, we get couples who spend a long time here, looking and laughing and hoping it never happens to them, and then people who've just broken up who want to tell us their stories". So it would seem that the exhibition could be enjoyed on many levels, with the needs of the audience being catered for whether these are to be entertained with tails of unwanted gifts of ridiculous underpants, or to bond with others in some sort of support group environment. Considering though the contributors to the Museum, why did these people feel the need to air their dirty laundry?

Dobrovic explains, "It's such a nice, simple idea, because everyone can relate to it". This underlines the motives of the Museum’s originators, as the concept was born when the artists Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic split up and decided to do something creative with the pain they were feeling. They claim, "The exhibition comes from a sincere, universal experience and helped us in our break-up process”. It is true that all of us at some point will probably go through the termination of a relationship, whether it is perceived as a positive or negative experience. Therefore, judging by the success of the exhibition and many of the responses posted on the BBC website, it would seem that the opportunity to join a community that promotes talking about failed love relationships, can produce an extremely cathartic effect. Perhaps this offloading of pressure was what the contributors to the Museum were gasping for.

In many ways, the Museum of Broken Relationships can be viewed as a commendable experiment, as its originators are on a mission to eradicate the “’destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery”, promoted by modern day media: these being guides for “how to get rid of the emotional burden the fastest and most efficient way”. Indeed the exhibition considers the fact that broken relationships do not seem to have a place in modern society: the slow, but necessary process of recovery would much preferably be replaced by many with the deletion of memories of a relationship, as in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. As this is not reality however, the attitude of Samantha Jones in Sex and the City is often sustained, in which there is no room for pining or remorse. Instead, the old is destroyed to make way for the new. So maybe for some people, to be offered the opportunity to admit that these methods do not work, without the risk of being labelled prudish, old fashioned or, God forbid, the next Bridget Jones, is a relief.

The Museum is divided into several sections, these being for material objects with a narrative, a section for letters, a virtual Museum with images of exhibits, and also a virtual space in which anyone can become a “donor”. In each of these spaces, the donor is allowed the opportunity to overcome emotional collapse by getting rid of objects that trigger “undesirable” emotions. This is, the Museum claims, to be done via the “creation of a preserved collective emotional history”. However, does this method really work?

By embracing the concept that relics of relationships can be metaphysical portals that are damaging to the owner, the Museum is encouraging a confrontation of both conscious and repressed feelings. As I see it, this process could have several possible outcomes. In some cases, the object could be handed over to the Museum and presented as it is: a cathected object. The donor can, as a result, be successfully freed from the clutches of the item that may have haunted their shelf, cupboard or underwear drawer for so many years, and allow happy memories from a terminated relationship to emerge in it’s place. Conversely though, perhaps when the offending item is put on display in an exhibition it gets transformed in the mind of the donor into something else and becomes no longer a symbol of an individual’s experiences. It is now solely an art object, an artefact in a museum gathering dust. Effectively in this case, the object in it’s original context will no longer exist, so instead of dealing with the intense feeling attached to it, the “quick fix” method has been implicated and the thing destroyed. Or maybe, and I feel that this is the most damaging scenario; the donor takes the teddy bear off the shelf, the wedding dress out of the cupboard and literally, but also psychically, puts it on a pedestal. This overlaying of ideas onto the initial cathexis could cause the symbolic significance of the object to grow and gain omnipotence, resulting in an emotional relapse.

However, these are just theories. Whatever the psychical and emotional results of such an experiment may be, the Museum of Broken Relationships effectively displays a feeling that seems to be shared by many. This is the need to find new ways of coping with the emotional turmoil caused by love relationships, and the baggage that comes with them.