Installation view, Opacity, UKS, Oslo, 2005
The slide-projection “We used to run an artspace just across the street
from here” takes it departure point in the storefront typical for small-scale
artistrun- and independent spaces and is working around the idea of the facade
as a communicative space towards a public. Images of such an entrance situation
with a shop-window and a door towards the street alternates with a short,
model-like story about a small independent artspace, without the town or the
space being specified. Neither do the images show the space itself. The story
is rather simple, but addresses issues of gentrification of neighbourhoods,
strategies and effects of self-organisation, and the spaces in which this
can happen. Although the same few images repeat themselves throughout most
of the piece, towards the end images of entrances to Viennese post-war public
housing, decorated with mosaics of urban construction- sites, are mixed in.
This is a modern art in public space with an educative purpose, and represents
an opposition to the self-organised, individual practise of opening and defining
your own space as an emerging artist.
The piece was produced for the context of the nifca-exhibition Opacity at
UKS in Oslo, Norway.