With “Albert’s Guesthouse” Petra Elena Köhle and Nicolas Vermot-Petit-Outhenin present their second artist book after “Pour les Oiseaux”. The collection of materials develops the real story of a small Cambodian guesthouse, which the artists ran as the owner’s deputy for eleven days. The publication is published on the occasion of the solo exhibition in the gallery Madonna#Fust.
A guesthouse, two employees, 6 rooms, one absent boss, changing guests. These are the basic conditions of an experimental arrangement in the microcosm of the Cambodian town of Sihanoukville, where Köhle and Vermot took over the management of the small hotel Albert’s Guesthouse in November 2004. The owner of the hotel, whom they had met a few days before in the Fullmoon Bar, has to go to his father's funeral and asks the two Swiss to take over the management of the guesthouse in his absence. For eleven days, the artists stand at the hotel's récéption and take notes, make portraits, take photographs, document, talk to the guests, and thus compile materials into a detailed protocol of the meaningful and banal events.
The artist’s book “Albert’s Guesthouse” contains the entire protocol of the eleven days and numerous other materials and tells of colonialism, of the relationship between men and women, of desires and hopes, thus providing information about the entirely subjective history of those eleven days in November …