René Schweizer
Schweizer Cultural Concepts:

Happy End Express

The Happy End Express in short.

The Project includes two parts:

• The Theater Event

• The Art Event

As designers of lunar modules have probably read Jules Vernes "From Earth to Moon" in their youth, the creators of reality of the next millennium will maybe see the Happy End Express at a theatre and be inspired by it. It is not meant to provide patent solutions for the problems of today's world or to speculate about the way to the promised land but only to confront them with a possible Happy End and in a open, amusing and creative way. The originators and producers offer a theme and invite all potentially interested persons to improvise on the instruments of their own talents.

The Happy End Express is an invitation to dance, a invitation to play with the own creativity and imagination. With the Happy End Express we set the ball rolling and wait with a childlike curiosity and thrilling alertness to see the actions it will activate, (influence on the future).

All rights reserved to Schweizer Cultural Concepts, Basle 1997.

The Theater Event

Barry E. Linder, an E.T. (extra-terrestrian) - or one imagines to be one? - appears at the office of the president of an advertising agency and offers him a job: the production of Happy End on earth. Leonard Furtwängler the addressed, does not know what to think of this job, but his potential client explains that the creation of the world was a play whose storyline has reached the point where the launch of the great finale, the Happy End should take place. The advertising men listens fascinated and starts - excited by his pragmatic imagination and the amazing (stunning) arguments of Linder - to create pictures and scenarios.

While the story runs it becomes clear that without humour an extension of the human horizon and a changing of the worlds view is no longer feasible. Through the experience of the play with its various dimensions of reality the viewer will in the end not know if he is in a true or fictive reality.

The Art Event

An exhibition in the foyer will inform the audience about the realization o The Happy End Express idea. By Ways o drawings, models, rough drafts, organigrams, plans, sketchings and schemata people will be able to trace the Swiss Cultural Concepts' first steps to organize The Happy End Express. For example, there will be a selection of written statements by leading figures regarding the question what they would do were they Leonard Furtwängler and had to decide on wheter to accept or turn down Linder's ofer.

By means of filling in questionnaires the public may actively take part in the project. Their addresses will be included in a list of people who will be informed about the Furthermore, they may become members of The Happy End Express Club. A display of books, audio-recordings and videos will offer the public to deeper investigate into the phenomenon and the rules of pioneering.

The play as well as the Art Event will be documented for further use.