Back
2015 » Austria » Student Section
| Curator: | Vero Schürr |
| Authors of Theme: | Christoph Fischer, Jenny Schleif |
| Designer / Architect of exhibition: | Fischer and Schleif |
BAR III / VI
BAR III / IV is hidden behind an inconspicuous door, the entrance to a tiny room. A small parallel world filled with the smell of booze and cigarettes. The radio only gets Top 40, and it feels like it’s always three o’clock in the morning...
Let’s imagine: three o’clock in the morning in Simmering, on the outskirts of Vienna. You are listening to a loud and noisy radio station, Radio Burgenland, the suburban hero of local radio. Mahogany as far as the eye can see, dim lighting, darts, photos of regulars, an old pay phone, coffee, beer and bottom-shelf liquor – the world stands still, forever in the early hours of the morning.
Once you arrive in this in-between world, you get an unfiltered experience. The longer and drunker the night, the more interesting the discussions.
The installation is a completely artificial bar, but not a product of artistic design or craftsmanship. Screw holes and decrepit furniture reveal the deception. Occasionally, the scaffolding holding up the bar can be seen from behind. The illusion of the bar – that it is a real place with real stories – exists only in the imagination of the visitors. The scenographic installation by Jenny Schleif and Christoph Fischer is hidden behind an inconspicuous door. This door is the entrance to a tiny room, about four meters square, the entrance to a small parallel world. BAR III / IV is part of a series in different locations, waiting for the next journey.
BAR III / IV is a bar trying to come into being, trying to be what it is: a bar. But is it a bar, a stage, or an installation? It is like a flickering image that comes and goes, briefly lives as a bar, then becomes an installation… or is it all just imagination? Is it just a bar because we want it to be?
Schleif and Fischer’s installation exists on the verge of reality and imagination; visitors oscillate between being spectators, actors and drinkers. A world of imagination at its most real, induced by alcohol and cigarettes, how real can it be?
BAR III / IV is not any bar, it is an Austrian bar, incorporating a certain style, familiar people, and the distinctive smell of suburban Viennese bars. A bar taken away from a specific place where it never actually existed.’ (Vero Schürr, curator)
is not any bar, it is an Austrian bar, incorporating a certain style, familiar people, and the distinctive smell of suburban Viennese bars. A bar taken away from a specific place where it never actually existed.’ (Vero Schürr, curator)