Aura Rendón Benger
"In your living room #4"
"In your living room #4"
group exhibition 2012
Leslie Nagel// Amber Oskam// Louis van Iterson//Aura Rendón Benger
In your living room is an ongoing project of exhibitions held outside the institution and inside the domestic sphere.
This initiative is founded by a group of students from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KABK) in The Hague who decided to use their own home as presentation space for contemporary arts.
http://www.inyourlivingroom.nl/
People had to go through different procedures before they could enter the exhibition space, the living room: they had to wait in a hallway along an obtrusive sound sculpture until they were asked to put on an overall, were given a tag with a number and their hands got disinfected. Then they could enter the living room, which, including all furniture and the floor, was completely covered in plastic. It was quite empty but offered different places to sit.
There was only a countdown (from three hours to zero) on a big screen and a live recording from where people got prepared to enter the living room. Therefore, the experience in the room eventually became a waiting for the end of the countdown. People tried to make conversation for the time to pass and distract themselves from the sweaty suits they were wearing. In the last minutes of the countdown, the anticipation rose to see at last a great and exciting “event”. Instead, nothing more happened, the countdown just signalled the end of the event.
The emptiness of the living room turned it into a place for people to meet, where they had to deal with themselves and others involuntarily. The physical transformation imposed on the audience was intended to take away some of their individuality and initiate a mental transformation and different spirit inside the living room.
