BILLY

Beatrijs Eemans, 2006

The young Belgian artist Stefaan Dheedene (b. 1975) graduated from the Higher Institute of Fine Art (HISK) in Antwerp at the end of last year. For his most recent work he has been inspired by observations, encounters, images and objects he comes across by chance. He incorporates them into documentaries, spatial reconstructions and copies. The video documents focus mainly on productive work and effects. He examines the ‘playing field’ where information is collected and the local effects this generates, rather than the connection between the information and the user. He is fascinated by documentaries and propaganda films and plays with the conventions of the documentary genre while attempting to use the art context for cultural stratification or correction, in contrast to or sometimes linking up with the art market.

The starting point for the new installation in this exhibition is the reproduction of a mass-produced object in which globalised production is reduced to the human scale: one piece of furniture / one carpenter. The end result of this artistic undertaking ultimately yields an identical product. All that has changed is the status and category of the product. The copied object acquires the status of a ‘unique, authentic work of art’, even though in its external features it is no different from a standard product produced on a large-scale in the commercial circuit and intended for mass consumption. For this artistic intervention Dheedene chose a random object: the ‘Billy’ bookcase, the cliched symbol of the huge IKEA furniture concern. At the heart of the idea is the exchange between a museum – S.M.A.K. – and a giant chain store – IKEA – where the artist makes use of the art context to infiltrate his personal artistic system into a globalised economic system. In concrete terms this means that the ‘original’ bookcase is displayed in the exhibition room.
At the beginning of the exhibition the artist attempts to infiltrate the imitation ‘Billy’ bookcase unnoticed back into the commercial circuit of the chain store. The perception of this transaction will differ in the two systems; that which for the one signifies a loss (the copy is inferior to the original) will by the other be considered a gain (the replacement of a banal product by a valuable work of art). (A certificate of authenticity will inform the unsuspecting buyer of the fact that he has bought ‘a work of art’, and that the real piece of furniture is in the SMAK). The artist is not particularly concerned about what or which product is copied, nor is the reproduction process in itself the most important element.
The essential thing is the adventure of the undertaking, in which the artist attaches importance above all to the consequences of the infiltration of the one system into the other and vice versa. It is only when the artist actually goes through with the entire process that he will know how it ends. In this situation the artist presents himself as a sort of ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘adventurer’.
An adventurer in the sense of someone who actually carries out a particular idea and thereby takes risks. The literal merging of the brand names IKEA and S.M.A.K. to form KAMIKASE also makes an ironic reference to this. Here is the artist as the kamikaze pilot who, in his intervention, penetrates an established system but causes only minimal disruption on the surface and does not succeed in destroying the system.
According to Sean Snyder, in this era of globalised capitalism the artist has to take a clear ethical responsibility. Dheedene’s motivation cannot be called ethically and socially sound or repoliticised as such, and his work is more in line with Liam Gillick’s discourse on a specific space for art. Inspired by the idea of a modernist sanctuary, Gillick sees art as a ‘space of contingency’: a refuge for discussion, criticism and rejection. Not an autonomous art, but an art which, by means of parallel activities, deconstructs the self-evidence of powerful systems in the social space in order to make their random nature and chance elements visible. And this is precisely what Dheedene is doing. He creates an adventurous space in an art context. He constructs a system of his own, infiltrates it into a bigger system, which is supposedly ‘ideal’, deconstructs its self-evident features and thus points out its weak spots.Dheedene’s use of documentary techniques is a major component of this complex strategy. The process of reproduction is recorded and presented to the public in the form of a neo-documentary film. What the film shows is almost a refined aestheticisation of the work process. The use of documentary techniques fits in with the current trend in which artists find spaces to present their work differently, in contrast to the traditional techniques of presentation. It is not the communication of information or its degree of truth that is important, but the ‘space for error’.