The service station as a theatre… I was fascinated by the notion of an art object as an ephemeral happening – an intangible experience being the image. Taking over semi-public spaces, using the service station’s architecture to create the image, appropriating this glorious illuminated arena.
My work in 1996 involved performing, and lots of people. There was a drummer and we had vodka and occupied the place for a while. Cars drove in, and out. I liked the idea of the audience being people who had stopped to get petrol, an incidental audience; banal, unromantic – we are all drivers sometimes. I was making video and photographs as documents, but also starting to think about them as artefacts. Maybe that was my way of trying to subvert their presence in the world, the corporate power. Gate-crashing a garage.
There were a number of international artists taking part in Charlie Citron’s project – A Memory Palace at The Artist’s Museum, in Lodz. We lived together for 2 weeks inside the museum; collaborating, socialising. For this event we’d bought charity shop fancy dress clothes, wild vintage stuff. We dressed up and went to the Statoil garage late at night. It seemed at the time like a dare, we didn’t seek permission through the appropriate channels…
(Even in the mid 90’s that felt both daring and too easy. We live in a capitalist economy, a so called free society. Was Poland different to the Netherlands in this way? ‘Art’ was a get out clause, when they asked why? we said – we’re making a film. Now, that is not reason enough, now, everyone has a camera, and it’s not even seen as relevant to question the role cameras play in our public live. At the time, people talked about the onset of sinister surveillance culture, about the erosion of public space and rights to gather and protest, about resistance.)
The garage staff were watching out of the window. The police turned up. We tried to make a super 8 film that didn’t properly come out, though there is maybe one good black and white photo of the project. We were using the technology available to us in Poland then. Around that time the Esso petrol company did an advert of cheerleaders dancing in a petrol station at night and I wondered if this was also an appropriation. What we had done seemed isolated and totally obscure.
Date
1996
Aknowledgements
Statoil Garage, Lodz
Charlie Citron
Archive
- New Observations Magazine
- Large format black and white photographic print
- Video of performance
- Photos at the Artists’ Museum