Gmelin’s father appears in the work Manifesto, 2010 representing power
and authority in a film scene from 1967 by swiftly putting on and
taking off the hats of public power-executing officials while he is
giving a speech. The hats of priests, clerks and police officers
appear and disappear in an eternal flow in a scene called `a lesson of
the antagonism between public interest and individual search for
happiness´ and is an idealistic pamphlet agitating against an
authoritarian society. In the installation these images are overlaid
with subtitles from An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth written 1998 by
Bruce Mau. Mau, the Canadian Chief Creative Officer of Design is a
self-proclaimed visionary and world-leading innovator, who uses the
language of advertising slogans or manifestoes to formulate “radical”
critique. Now merged together, Gmelin’s anti-authoritarian idealistic
father speaks the words of the innovative 20th century world-leading
design-guru.