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extension#15 The Good Life, a guided tour
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A.I.R extension#15 The Good Life, a guided tour


A film by Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans

FILM SYNOPSIS In the background technicians are installing a prestigious exhibition, whilst a smartly dressed lady is guiding a group of people around a series of pristine white spaces, some of them filled with crates and wrapped-up paintings. Along the way she not only comments on the art but also reveals the building to her audience from a unique perspective. Describing interiors, great views and the city’s vibrant opportunities, the lady turns out to be an estate agent who is selling an up-market architectural proposal and a lifestyle that grafts the ‘value’ of art with its institutions. Moving through the labyrinthine building, she finds herself lost in narrow corridors and staircases. Meanwhile the future development projects itself into the group’s collective imagination, fed by the visionary architectural model on display.

THE GOOD LIFE (a guided tour) redefines our perception of the art institution and raises our awareness of its part in the ‘creative city’, a scenario that is being played out in metropoles around the globe. The woman in the video who first seems to be an exhibition guide transforms into a real estate agent selling the visionary architectural proposal. Her hyperbolic language is derived from clippings from the Bristol Architecture Institute press archive, real estate advertisements & brochures, etc. The immaculate spaces in which she walks seem to be situated in one big museum, whereas in fact the building in the video consists of different white cubes located in England and Belgium. The apparently ‘neutral’ frame of the gallery space which envelopes the spiritual and cultural heritage of our society, recedes in favour of that of a real estate opportunity. The estate agent is the embodiment of the denial of any possible negative impact that the creative race between cities in a neo-liberal context might generate. Through a generic language that excludes any notion of ‘gentrification’, her hyperbolic tour creates an exclusive identity. The film’s elaborate treatment of sound – as well as the absence of it – disrupts the untenable perfection of the architecture, and its mediated forms, making the emptiness of the building sensible, which actually is what the estate agent is selling: a lifestyle fantasy projected on an empty shell.

THE GOOD LIFE (a guided tour) exists both as an autonomous single screen video piece and as an installation version with 2 synchronised projections. In its first presentation the video functioned as a ‘marketing tool’ for a fictional real estate development THE GOOD LIFE, which was the title of the Vermeir/Heiremans solo exhibition at Arnolfini, Bristol (UK) in Spring 2009. The show was curated by Nav Haq.

view the full length video here:

single screen:

vimeo.com/12509284

double screen version:

vimeo.com/12688830


The Good Life (a guided tour)
Writer/Director: Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans
Architecture: 51N4E – Office for Architecture
Sound: Justin Bennett, Milena Mizgiert (piano)
Sound Mix: Boris Debackere
Camera/Editing: Amir Borenstein, Katleen Vermeir
Costume: Mieja Hollevoet

Estate Agent: Carly Wijs
Artistic Director: Tom Trevor

Year: 2009
Country: Belgium
Language: English
Subtitles: Dutch
Duration: 16’
Image: Colour
Ratio: 16:9
Sound: Stereo

Commissioned by ARNOLFINI, Bristol (UK)
A Limited Edition Production
Supported by Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF)
Shot on location in Arnolfini (Bristol), Bristol Record Office (Bristol), Wiels (Brussels), MuHKA (Antwerp), Z33 (Hasselt)

Film Distribution:ARGOS, Centre for Art and Media, Brussels (BE)