Kitchnapping Goes Shopping

installation with 10 shopping carts, 10.000 flyers, video, diashow, performance, 2011

A call for concepts by the artist Annegret Bleisteiner for a show at the New Art Society Regensburg resulted in mine being chosen for a group of artists to realise.

The Art Society is situated in a 1970s shopping mall. Opposite it is a large discount store, whose customers appear to show little interest in art. The clatter of shopping carts on the concrete floor can constantly be heard in the Art Society’s rooms, where large windows make the establishment feel much like a discount store itself.

In the run-up to the “kitchnapping goes shopping” show, a series of flyers were produced. They looked like supermarkets leaflets publicising special offers. The flyers, which actually presented works of art, were then handed out to passers-by and dropped into people’s mailboxes on the day the exhibition opened. Shopping carts piled high with many of the 10,000 brochures stood in the Art Society’s exhibition space and images of “special offers” were projected onto the wall with. The show attracted a mix of discount store customers and members of the Regensburg art scene.