Temporary Autonomous Gallery (TAG): 2007

In 1920 Max Ernst organized the notorious Dada ‘Spring Awakening' in a Cologne brewery. To view the show, visitors had to pass though a public lavatory and listen to a recital of lewd poetry by a young girl in a white communion dress. The police closed the exhibition on charges of obscenity.

Inspired in part by Ernst’s event, the Temporary Autonomous Gallery (TAG) held its premier action on Wednesday, August 2nd in the first floor men’s lavatory of the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, without first informing or obtaining permission from the ICA. Utilizing a “flash mob” strategy, participants arrived at 6:00 PM sharp and crowded into the ICA bathroom, where they were greeted by a wine reception and a selection of digitally printed images temporarily mounted to the lavatory walls.

Public restrooms are a traditional location for both graffiti and illicit meetings, and TAG represents a bit of both, here calling on the participant to violate gender as well as social, spatial and property norms. In keeping with the exhibition’s context, works that questioned bodily space, function, and representation were highlighted and included photography by Corey Armpreister, painting by Sally Eckhoff, an essay on sex in public restrooms by Albo Jeavons and the work of more than 25 other contributing artists, critics and academics.

The decision to stage TAG within the ICA’s bathroom represents a playful and ironic challenge to the curatorial gatekeeping of the official art institution. But it also operates within the context of a larger conversation between the ICA and TAG’s sponsor, Philadelphia-based art collective Basekamp, initiated during Basekamp’s participation in the ICA’s Locally Localized Gravity exhibition earlier this year. In that project Basekamp inquired into the existence of “Plausible Artworlds”—plural artistic environments that transgress the boundaries of the mainstream art world—through a series of discussions, performances and screenings onsite at the ICA. Basekamp’s involvement with Locally Localized Gravity was summarized in an experimental documentary in which Claudia and Jamie, the displaced protagonists of EL Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, take up residence within the ICA, representing the naïf trespassing on the institution and functioning as both poacher and constituent. The TAG organizers thought it appropriate that the next stage in this conversation emerge from the very same bathroom where Claudia and Jamie have presumably been hiding since the close of Locally Localized Gravity. Where they will appear next is anybody’s guess.

TAG was sponsored by the alt.SPACE festival and part of the ongoing Plausible Artworlds project.