Vermeir & Heiremans
»The good life (A guided tour)«, 2009
Video, Farbe, Ton, 16 Min.
A Limited Edition Production supported by Flemish Visual Fund - Commissioned by Arnolfini Art Centre, Bristol (UK)
Written and directed by Vermeir & Heiremans, Camera: Amir Borenstein, Soundscape: Justin Bennett, Cast: Carly Wijs, Tom Trevor
Vermeir & Heiremans, »The good life (A guided tour)«, 2009, Videostill
Vermeir & Heiremans, »The good life (A guided tour)«, 2009, Videostill
Invited by Nav Haq (Curator at M HKA, Museum for contemporary art Antwerp/Belgium)
In 2009, the Arnolfini art centre in Bristol invited the Brussels-based artists Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans to develop a new project especially for its building. Their proposal was unequivocal: turn the former warehouse into luxury residential units and sell them off. They developed a unique collaboration between themselves and a renowned office for architecture – 51N4E – to create a new design and use for the Arnolfini building that is striking and ambitious.
Entitles The Good Life (2009) their proposal considers how »strategic foresight« has become part of the socio-economic plan for art institutions in the twenty-first century, locating these institutions as central in the regeneration of cities. The real estate agent guiding the tour adopts a verbal style that thinly veils any overt notion of gentrification, while conjuring up impressions of aspiration and opulence – a lifestyle fantasy projected onto an empty shell. Incorporating high-gloss brochures and a maquette of the extraordinary building designed by 51N4E, The Good Life adopts an approach that critically »over-identifies« with its subject matter to the point of adopting all its rhetorical forms. The Keynesian thesis of pumping steroids into ‘demand’ rather is taken to a near-delusional aesthetic plane through generating unattainable desires for the individual.
The Good Life was a significant project in the practice Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans in terms of their long-term investigation into the ideology of architecture, and led on to their most recent project »The Residence (a wager for the afterlife)« (2012).
Text: Nav Haq
Katleen Vermeir (*1973) and Ronny Heiremans (*1962) live and work in Brussels, Belgium. In 2006 both artists initiated A.I.R (short for »artist in residence«), a long-term collaborative practice that examines the dynamic relation between art, architecture and economy. Recently, Vermeir and Heiremans have presented their work in Videonale 13 (Bonn), Videoex (Zürich), Viennale (Vienna) (all 2011), ARGOS (Brussels), EXTRA CITY (Antwerp), 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial (Shenzhen) and Manifesta 9 (Limburg) (all 2012).
