What is going to be then?

Marina Grzinic, 2006

The Scandinavian multinational Ikea sells low-priced furniture for home and office in customer-friendly boxes. The company is also famous for the guarantee that comes with its furniture: customers can try the items 90 days at home and if they are not satisfied with the product, they can return it. Ikea refunds their money without further questions, without any attempt to convince the customer to change his mind, provided the goods are returned undamaged and in their original packing.

For his solo exhibition in the S.M.A.K. Stefaan Dheedene bought a piece of furniture from the Billy series at Ikea. But the day before the exhibition opened, Dheedene took Billy back to Ikea. He received the money he invested back and sent an e-mail to those involved in the project: “The exchange is done, let's wait.” Wait for what?

In the time before the opening the artist hired a carpenter who reconstructed the mass-produced Billy as a unique work of art. Using a slightly different wood, Dheedene’s Billy was born – almost the same as Ikea's mass-produced version sold all over the world, but unique. A video recording the work of the hired carpenter is on view during the exhibition. The video refers to the euphoric days of capitalism, while at the same time subverting its ideology. The whole reconstruction process (sawing, drilling, etc) is presented with meticulous care in the video; it combines overviews and (almost abstract) details.

Dheedene’s Billy was being (re)born in different circumstances. Not only did the artist use a slightly different wood, but the point of view, too, was different, or rather, Dheedene's Billy was based on a completely different concept with regard to its purpose, aim and goal. Just before the opening of the exhibition Dheedene took his Billy back to Ikea. The staff, however, did not notice the difference. Dheedene inserted within the Ikea’s wrappings, around his authentic Billy, his certificate of authenticity and uniqueness (bearing his name and address), which in the future will hopefully be found by a new buyer of one of Ikea’s customer-friendly boxes.

With Billy Dheedene investigates seriality vs. authorship, money investments vs. return; the work questions labour, trends, concepts vs. exhibitionism. There is a link to Duchamp and Warhol, but the link to a few recent, less known art projects is more relevant.

In the mid 1990s Ivana Keser, a Croat artist was making newspapers with news from her private life. These were total works of art: Keser contributed the texts, illustrated them and published the newspaper. On February 25, 1994 she published only one copy of her Personal Newspaper. With only one copy of what is usually regarded a mass media product, she reversed the Warholian machine, which, on the contrary took uniqueness to be serially (re)produced. With her one copy of Newspaper she exchanged seriality for uniqueness, and transposed the meaning of a mass media product to a different context.
Precisely this is what happened with Dheedene’s Billy, though Dheedene added a new element: the artist inserted his work into a circuit from which there is no return, thus creating a new ownership relation.

In 2004, Christian Mayer, an artist from Germany living in Vienna, exhibited in an art gallery one of Ikea's full furnishing programs for offices with art works included (framed paper copies of Mondrians and Pollocks; the frames, although mass-produced are more valuable than the reproductions).
With his exhibition Mayer wanted to raise question about labour and the art studio as a working place. After the exhibition he took the furniture back to Ikea and his money was refunded under the terms of the guarantee.
Apart from being witty at a time of complete pauperisation of young artists that had to sponsor galleries in order to build a name for the future, he also proved in situ that what was once an avant-garde gesture is today merely decorative furniture for a home and working environment – i.e. with regard to the middle class and lower strata of societies. Printed Mondrians and Pollocks in cheap frames, are art realities of global capitalism’s (lower) middle class. From the perspective of the global capitalist bourgeois the value of authentic Mondrians and Pollocks is not based on the history of art, but on the stock market. For the rich the truth of Mondrian's and Pollock's originals today resides in analyst ratings, financial results and in-depth information of their stocks quotes and charts on the stock market. This shows clearly that a reality for some is not the truth for others.
After the exhibition Mayer, like Dheedene, took the furniture back to Ikea in its original boxes. His money was refunded without further ado. Both exhibitions were successful, but the outcomes were different. Mayer’s art work was completed precisely when he returned the pieces of furniture back to the shop and his money was refunded. Dheedene's work, on the contrary, only starts being a work of art the moment he returned it to Ikea. The question to be answered is “What's it going to be then, eh?” as is the title of chapter 21 of Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange (missing in most copies printed in the United States).

That involves pushing further and rethinking the process of authentication of art within everyday consumer reality. Dheedene's work is about Duchamp but viewed from the reverse sense. It is an analysis about two not so distant contexts, the museum and the shop, and the way how today art works are largely neutralized by turning them into commodities. But this is only one part of the story. Dheedene's Billy also confronts us with the fact that contemporary artists are increasingly becoming producers of art works that are turned into commodities. Dheedene's Billy breathes Ikeanism, instead of the atmosphere of the exhibitions of an era that has gone.

Brian Holms, activist and critic, traces the subjection of the artist to the art market and the tendency to mass-produce art works that are to be quoted on the stock market to a dichotomy that may go back to the cultural politics of the 1960s (if not further back in time). He refers to this dichotomy in a review of A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey’s. In this book Harvey describes a split “between the traditional working- class preoccupation with social justice and the New Left concern with individual emancipation and full recognition and expression of individual identities.” Both preoccupations are lost today. The working class is caught in the limbo of surviving strategies and unjust consumerist seriality, the New Left is caught in the industry of theory, happily publishing books in the Western context, as diverse as types of brands on the market.

Today only capital is still preoccupied with emancipation (sic!) – only capital is committed to the defence of individual identity and the expression of freedom. Is it not today that capital is called inventive, social and productive? We, the others, are not even citizens, but merely miserable consumers.

With Billy Dheedene confronts us with all these facts. As Holmes argues the only option left is to create radically experimental works about the self and society, expressing how signs and materials have broken with history. He calls for a post-avant-garde art that will be capable to tackle the subservience of art to finance in the neoliberal economy. Maybe Dheedene’s Billy is the post-avant-garde creature that has embarked on a voyage with no return.

Individual readings influenced by different anti neo-liberal perceptions play an important role in tackling clichés of reality and truth of the contemporary art institution.
In the end, lets reflect on the subtitle of Stefaan Dheedene's exhibition project: Kamikaze. It is in his context a coinage of two distinctive brands – S.M.A.K. and IKEA – but Kamikaze denotes much more. It refers to Dheedene’s suicidal gesture within the field of contemporary art. Instead of producing art objects, he has decided to question the relationship between art and economy, history and present, and above all, raise questions with regard to originality and seriality. The American and Japanese perception of Kamikaze differ greatly, and something similar is true with regard to Dheedene's Billy.
While some will consider Billy as a simple ready-made reality, we know that it is a radical point of departure. Dheedene’s Billy is about the radicalization of the dependence of contemporary art on the market, about the appropriation of art, about the commodification of art, but also about finding a place for art in everyday life.