A.I.R extension#15 (The Good Life)

The project was commissioned in 2008 by the Arnolfini Art Center in Bristol. We proposed a future scenario where the Arnolfini is selling off its building to be transformed into luxury apartments. Although the development was part of the Arnolfini Futurology program, organized by Nav Haq, the exhibition curator, THE GOOD LIFE was never introduced to the public as an art project.

Taking this vision all the way we initiated a unique collaboration between the Arnolfini and the renowned Brussels based office for architecture 51N4E to create a new design for the Arnolfini building that is striking and ambitious. Collaborating with the architects, we created a concept that eloquently framed 51N4E’s radical architecture. This all-embracing proposal was named THE GOOD LIFE.

51N4E designed an iconic tower for the Bristol skyline, stamped with Arnolfini’s seal of pioneering quality. Its amenities were labeled 'The Good Life Collection'. The collection included an English landscape garden, a spa inspired on the Byzantine cisterns in Istanbul and a lobby that had to have the feel of a cutting edge art gallery. The exhibition spaces were installed in the manner of real estate marketing suites that at the time were present everywhere in the city. In the entrance we had set up a banner with the future development. In the ground floor gallery our video The Good Life (a guided tour) functioned as a promotional film. In a small room upstairs there was an architecture model, a series of artist impressions of the new development, and a public consultation book in which visitors could write their comments and approve or reject the proposal. The main galleries were completely empty, except for a few iconic designer chairs on which people could contemplate the proposal in a glossy real estate leaflet.

“The Good Life (2009) 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 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 the renowned architecture office 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 the demand is taken to an near-delusional aesthetic plane through generating unattainable desires for the individual.
(Kaleidoscope 10, Current Account by Nav Haq)

After the Bristol presentation The Good Life (a guided tour) (2009) is being presented as an autonomous single or double screen video piece both in an exhibition or screening context.
The Good Life promotional website could be found on:www.thegoodlife-collection.com

The Good Life: solo exhibition Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans. In collaboration with 51N4E – Office for Architecture, Justin Bennett, Amir Borenstein, Mieja Hollevoet, Pierre Huyghebaert, Eric Jooris and Carly Wijs. Curator Nav Haq. Arnolfini, Center of Contemporary Art, Bristol (UK), April 10-June 7, 2009.