Art, Places and People

Art, in the deep sense, is everywhere. In museums, galleries, in cities, in books, in shopping malls, in public piazzas, in our brains, in our everyday. Yet, when discussing about art the majority of people think about a museum or an art gallery. But, when dealing with art, one must think about not only the essence behind it, being it a photograph, a poetry, a painting or a scultpure. One must think about the place where art takes place. A room, a glossy page, an art gallery (known as "whitecube") or inside a known or not museum. Art should link people, should talk to them, should make them think and should give them feelings. Happiness, fear, pleasure or disgust it doesn't matter as long as art become the vehicle of/for discussion. Sometimes I wonder if the right vehicle is the museum. I do not believe so since, for some reason, I feel more detached to art when I am inside a museum . I get more involved in the discourse if I find myself in places where restrictions are less present. Art becomes less distant in art galleries and in common places such as restaurants and bars. In a way you become part of the spectacle (as Guy Debord would say). I came across this bar named Karriere Bar in Copenhagen. The place was founded by the danish artist Jeppe Hein. This isn't only a restaurant, a gallery or a dancefloor. It is the place where everyone becomes a performer. Everything inside Karriere Bar is a piece of art: the furniture, drinks, lamps. It is a place to socialize but it also becomes a place of creation. What is unusual is that in here are not only involved the "selected few" of the art world but common people. And the same common people become part of the art unconsciously participating at the art-show. A real interaction between the artist and the viewer takes finally place. And the interesting thing, if you don't have the chance to go to Copenhagen is that you can become sort of a voyeur just by logging onto the restaurant website: clicking the link ‘i’m a voyeur baby’, you can hear fragments of real-time conversations and ambient sound, picked up from an ashtray-shaped microphone on a table of the Karriere Bar. This bar/home interface is the work of Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures Miller, one of the 32 artworks showing in this art gallery for the everyday pleasure.