press release: use as you like: forward, print, delete, read, share & enjoy

[Beierle & Keijser]

   !UPWARDLY MOBILE
   11 August - 18 August 2002,  Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt

   !UPWARDLY MOBILE is a collaborative project by Norman Beierle, Valentina
   Ferrarese and Hester Keijser, and is part of the Free Manifesta*.

   !UPWARDLY MOBILE will use a public space of the Museum für Moderne Kunst
   Frankfurt between 11 and 18 August 2002 for a special exhibition.
   Approximately 25 international artists were invited to send a work that
   fits into a transparent plastic bag, which will be hung in the coat check
   room of the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt.

   Through this project, the organisers offer the participants a Œreal¹
   (albeit hilarious) exhibition in the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt,
   as well as an opportunity to leave the work in the “stock" of the museum.
   The artists will receive documentation of the show, and possibly the
   receipt from the coat check room if they decide to leave it there as part
   of the museum “collection". This way the participating artists will have a
   chance to upgrade their CV and be a part of an expanding network.

   Project Background
   What remains of an exhibition nowadays - reviews, catalogues, websites,
   documentation, established contacts and networks within the art world
   etc.- is often more important for both public and artists than the
   exhibition itself ever was. How many artists¹ works do we know only
   through the traces it has left behind? Is not the exhibition increasingly
   a device for generating publicity, rather than something in its own right?


   !Upwardly Mobile takes this idea to the extreme by reducing the exhibition
   to this nuclear task; what is important is that the art works have
   factually been inside a museum or any major art institution for a certain
   time. This does not have to be an extensive period, just long enough to
   start generating the desired traces of its history.

   The coat check room of a museum has been chosen for this purpose, as it
   can be considered a semi-public space in between the institutional and the
   non-institutional, still open for interventions like these. In fact,
   !Upwardly Mobile behaves like a clever parasite of the museum organism. It
   uses its host for transportation to other suitable hosts and
   simultaneously assuring its survival by feeding on the life saps of the
   museum, such as it¹s good name and the visitors. As with other harmless
   parasites, !Upwardly Mobile will by itself not cause any vital damage to
   the organism of the host, merely a slight sense of irritation.

   During the exhibition the visitors of the museum will be encouraged
   through discussions with the organisers of the project to take on the role
   of scientists, studying the life cycle of the parasite and the relation
   between host and its unsolicited guest.

   Project organisers
   !UPWARDLY MOBILE is the first collaborative project of Norman Beierle
   (Germany), Valentina Ferrarese (Italy) and Hester Keijser (Netherlands).
   All three artists are operating internationally and have had shows
   throughout Europe.
   For more info you can reach them at: upwardly2002 at email.com or write to:
   Beierle - Ferrarese - Keijser, Haagweg 4, 2311 AA Leiden, The Netherlands.

   Participating artists as of July 4
   Sebastian Behmann
   Norman Beierle
   Jean Pierre Ceton
   Tamuna Chabashwili
   Donald Clark
   Alasdair Currie
   Iemke van Dijk
   Caroline Eggel
   Escapes
   Matteo Ghidoni
   Amanda McGregor
   Andrew Hewitt
   Koen Hauser
   Joerg Huber
   IRWIN Group
   Melanie Jordan
   Hester Keijser
   Aurelius Kowalczyk
   Andrea Morrucchio
   Esther Polak
   Erwin Posarnig
   Samantha Rees
   Erzen Shkololli
   Sasha White
   Guido Winkler
   Juan Zapata
   Laszlo Zoltan
   Mattias Zuccheti


   Locations
   !Upwardly Mobile will be in Frankfurt between August 11-18 in the
   Museum für Moderne Kunst
   Domstraße 10
   60311 Frankfurt am Main
   Germany

   The work of all participants and the correspondence can soon be visited at
   our website in progress: http://digilander.iol.it/upwardlymobile
   (now visit the beta version!)

   *The Free Manifesta is a project by Sal Randolph for the Manifesta4 in
   Frankfurt.
   For more information about the Free Manifesta and the Manifesta4 please
   visit:
   http://www.freemanifesta.org
   http: //www.manifesta.de