ARTIFICIAL HELLS

former west
In tracing the re- emergence of a social turn in Europe, 1993 is a key
transitional year. Until that point, artist collectives had been a predominantly
North American phenomenon, and activist in orientation, as a
result of the AIDS crisis and ensuing ‘culture wars’ over NEA funding. In
1993 we begin to see the formation of Northern European collectives such
as Superflex (1993), N55 (1994) and Park Fiction (1994). It is telling that
this collectively driven work derives from site- specific practice rather than
from theatre and performance, as has tended to be the case in previous
chapters. This year, 1993, also marks the consolidation of a new type of
site- specific exhibition that would become an important reference point
for the emerging globalised contemporary art biennial: exhibitions that
directly addressed site as a socially constituted phenomenon, rather than as
a formal or phenomenological entity. This is in contrast to previous types
of site- specific curating, such as ‘Sculpture Projects Münster’ (1987) and
‘Places with a Past: New Site- Specific Art at Charleston’s Spoleto Festival’
(1991), both of which used site as an evocative formal backdrop for
work imbued with historical resonance. To examine this shift I will look
at three exhibitions that mark a transition from site- specificity as a matter
of tailored formal arrangement to the project of embedding the artist in
the social field. 6
I. ‘Project Unité’, ‘Sonsbeek 93’ and ‘Culture in Action’
In Europe, two exhibitions paved the way for the shift described above:
Kasper König’s outdoor sculpture show ‘Sculpture Projects Münster’
(1987), and Jan Hoet’s ‘Chambres d’Amis’ (1986), an experimental exhibition
in which (mainly male and European) artists were invited to create
installations in over fifty private homes in Ghent. Although viewing the
works in ‘Chambres d’Amis’ inevitably involved liaising with the owners
of each residence, this was not understood to be the exhibition’s primary
goal. 7 Any social benefits were collateral rather than intentional: ‘Chambres
d’Amis’ was, Hoet notes, an opportunity ‘for a fertile aesthetic dialogue
between different cultures’, and led to ‘warm and cordial contacts, not only
between artists and hosts, but also between occupiers and visitors’. 8 Most of
the works comprised formal and atmospheric reconfigurations of domestic
space, rather than dealing with class or identity; the one exception to this
was the Belgian artist Jef Geys, who placed French revolutionary slogans
on the doors of six lower- income households. 9
The artist Christian Philipp Müller saw ‘Chambres d’Amis’ while working
with König on the 1987 edition of Münster. Three years later, Müller
was invited by the French curator Yves Aupetitallot to have a solo exhibition
in Saint Etienne, and while preparing the show decided to visit a
housing estate by Le Corbusier in the nearby town of Firminy. Modelled
on the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, the estate in Firminy was in a
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