'Imaginary facts': what happens when fiction looks factual?
From Finland’s Bonk Museum to Damien Hirst’s deep-sea mockumentary, creators are seizing on po-faced conventions to deliver enormous porkies. What’s behind the trend?
In Uusikaupunki, Finland, there is a small museum dedicated to Bonk Business Inc, a “multiglobal industrial conglomerate” specialising in anchovy products, cosmic therapy and localised black holes. The museum chronicles the history and achievements of the company in obsessive detail, displaying old advertisements and inventions dating back to 1893. On the wall hangs a corporate headshot of Sven Triloqvist, vice-president of advanced disinformation systems at Bonk Business Inc.
This colourful corporation is, of course, completely fictitious. It is the work of artist and sculptor Alvar Gullichsen, who uses the format of the industrial museum to
