во-да

Power Toilets questions public access to power structures. Consisting of an exact replica of the interior of a toilet found within an iconic political or corporate site of power, the work confronts the architecture of power by taking an everyday site of waste – the toilet – and reimagining it as a public domain. Power Toilets attempts to redistribute power by opening the world’s most inaccessible places to the public. In doing so, the work invites its users to question the relationship between original and copy, exclusivity and inclusivity, and, ultimately, the infrastructures of power and its every day manifestations.

In order to create each work, the interior of the toilet is secretly accessed and photographed by SUPERFLEX or by a third party and then replicated in painstaking detail. The copy-toilet is then installed in a publicly accessible location, in contrast to its original context.

Power Toilets
Superflex

Within the copyright regime, every commodity and concept is assigned ownership and thus becomes incorporated within a global system that functions to protect and defend its perceived value. The dictum “if value then right” is used by copyright advocates to suggest that anything that could be valuable should therefore be copyrighted, and that all unauthorised copying should be considered theft and be punishable by law.

Each iteration of If Value Then Copy consists of three identical paintings; this repetition points to the uniformity of commercial mass production. At the same time, the slogan challenges the very idea of originality, authorship and value. Is any idea truly original? Can one claim ownership of immaterial goods? How do we evolve if not by mimicking and copying what is already surrounding us?

If Value Then Copy
Superflex

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Ulay. There is a Criminal Touch to Art, 1976

Before showing the video of the Action, Ulay describes the course of events in 14 programmatic steps as follows:

He starts by hanging a reproduction of the Spitzweg painting "The Poor Poet" measuring 2.50 m in front of the College of Fine Arts in Berlin. Then he drives to the National Gallery in his own car and parks it at the back of the building. From there, he walks into the National Gallery building like any normal visitor to the museum, removes the picture from the wall, walks quickly back to his car and escapes in the direction of Kreuzberg to the "Künstlerhaus Bethanien" where he leaves his car. From the Künstlerhaus, he walks into the Moskauer Strasse, still carrying the picture. Once there, he enters a house for immigrant (so-called guest workers’) families where, in the living room of one of the families, he takes down a reproduction and hangs up the painting by Spitzweg instead.

александр слюсарев

her voice — echoes of chantal akerman at photo museum antwerp